Geocaching (Halifax - Day 3/4)

May 27, 2007

I woke to a beautiful Sunday, and was eager once again to go geocaching. Checking my email, I saw that there was a reply from the owner of the cache in the cemetery. After a quick breakfast, where for the second day in a row, the scrambled eggs tasted .. weird, I headed out to finally find this cache. With the reply, I was able to find the cache in a manner of minutes. Strangely enough, I didn't do any dancing or singing of "We are the Champions".

My next stop was the camo cache that I was unable to get to yesterday due to Frisbee playing shirtless guys. Sadly, today was no better. Actually, it was much worse. Today, I was unable to get to the cache due to sunbathers, and they tend not to move on very quickly. Instead, moved on, sighing in frustration. (And you know Frank is addicted when he chooses following signals sent by billion dollar military satellites over watching bikini-clad sunbathers).

The next cache was near the statue of Cornwallis, near the train station. I stopped to take pictures of the statues. I especially enjoyed the Ukrainian one. Then it was onto the business of finding the cache. I was being careful as there were a few people nearby. I took a reading from the GPS, walked to a possible spot, and pretended to be resting, but it wasn't close enough. I did this several times until I got to the cache. By now, I was quite far away from the statue and the "crowd".

Then, it was off to another statue, this time of a shipping magnate. The GPS signal here was just horrible. I was going around and around with no success. The cache 3.5 m away one second, and 25 m away the next. I sat around and searched the pine-like (yew? juniper?) shrubbery between passers-by, but finally gave up when my hand became too itchy.

The next cache oughta be easy. It's in a library and from the logs, the librarians were basically taking people to the book. Sadly, the library is closed this Sunday, so I headed into downtown Halifax. This next cache was actually described as "too easy", which apparently means my GPS signal was a block and a half off, and even based on the map, ground zero was an empty lot.

I headed back towards the hotel, but made a quick stop near the camo cache I had tried earlier, but once again, no luck. The number of sunbathers had actually increased.

May 28, 2007

It's a rainy and cold Monday. That's actually good news because the park was completed deserted and I was able to easily retrieve the camo cache. Of course, after all that waiting, I almost break it trying to get the cover off and then almost break it again trying to get the cover on. You see, I didn't realize that you were supposed to slide the cover off and on. Luckily, no damage done.

I still had to pick up a piggy bank for Anne's collection, and possibly one for our trip to the Happy Pig Collector's Convention (in exchange for hundreds of tiny plastic "Toss the Pigs" pigs). The tourist area downtown were practically deserted, and I was able to get two piggy banks very quickly.

I was off to the "too easy" cache, and this time, decided to check across the street from where I looked. The stores here were all pretty much closed already too, and this time around, the find was too easy. The re-hiding was somewhat more difficult.

Geocaching (Halifax - Day 2)

May 26, 2007
Saturday, and for the first time in a while, I was free, unencumbered by work. The weather was super sunny and super hot. I headed out to catch up on all those missed days of geocaching.

(Note: It's been a while so some of this stuff may not be in order).

I had prepped the night before, and was using a pretty simple method to determine which cache to look for next. I basically looked for which one was the closest, found it, and then repeated the process. The first was the cemetery that I searched before. The previous night, I had discovered via a local paper's website that this cemetery's world record is that it's the only cemetery in the world with a working traffic light on its grounds. (Sadly, this information came as part of a story about vandalism in the cemetery). Upon arriving, I noticed that the traffic light was indeed on the cemetery grounds, but only by a foot or so. I even figured out what the hint with its reference to snakes was about. In the same corner of the cemetery was the "Blackader" family plot. Unfortunately, I was still unable to find the cache container.

Undaunted, I moved on towards the next cache. I was sidetracked by the sudden appearance of a Tim Horton's, and stopped for a breakfast biscuit and some bottled water. The next cache was in a nearby park, and very uneventful, except that the container was pretty high up, "Friendly Giant" high.

Then I headed to Concordia University. The first order of business was to take pictures of some of the university buildings. After that, I had to figure out what side of the street the cache was on, and the GPS signal was bouncing around a little bit. I finally got to the right side, and realized that it also definitely high up in a tree. Seeing no muggles (yes, the geocaching folks stole it from Harry Potter) around, I climbed a fence and felt around a tree until I found it. It was a fast find, but the trick was getting the container back into the exact same place. I tried the best I could, but now that I knew where it was, it felt a little too easy to spot from the sidewalk. Oh well.

I followed the street down towards the railroad tracks, looking to do a trilogy of caches that required extra work once the log book was found. The first cache was easy enough to find, as it was sitting on the ground, having slid off its hiding place, its contents spilled. I picked everything up and then had to draw a picture of myself in the log. I think I did a pretty good job highlighting my squinty eyes and bald spot.

The next cache was the 2nd of trilogy, which required me to write the "most ridiculous opening line to a story that they can come up with", the inspiration of this was Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the author of that infamous sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night".

I followed the GPS signal to a small parkette, and then proceeded to "tear" the parkette apart in an attempt to find the container. I must've covered every single inch of the parkette, read the hint for this cache, and covered every single inch of the parkette again.

I was going to give up on several occasions, but I had already written my sentence for the trilogy. On my last attempt, I found a container (yellow plastic egg) and excitedly opened it open to find it empty. I went back to the same spot and found the right container.

Here's my sentence: "The day was hot enough for the hotel restaurant to have the brunch omelette station outside, literally, because if they can weasel their way out of clean towels for the sake of the environment, then they can convince you that eggs cooked on the sideway are safe".

The last leg of the trilogy required that you write a haiku in the log book. I was eager to get to it because I had written a really cool haiku for it (which, of course, I can't find anymore). I found the parkette in a quiet residential neighbourhood and went to work looking for the "X" that marks the spot, as indicated by the hint. I ended up looking around the whole park, under shrubs, near wasp nests, around garbage cans, but just could not find it. (In my defense, when I wrote to the owner of the cache, they indicated that the X had become really faded). In the end, I had to leave as some neighbourhood teens came by to enjoy their ice cream.

I headed out to the next cache, and it was an amazing quick find in a little parkette in a median. Sadly, the cache had been reduced to a shadow of its former self, as it used to be a place for people to trade quarters, but now, it's just a film cannister with a log and pencil. The quarters caused the cache to get muggled too often.

I was now extremely thristy and really needed a drink. Luckily, there was a Sobey's nearby, and even better, there was a magnetic cache hidden under the sign at the end of the parking lot. It was a much faster find than I thought, with no muggles around. Then a quick stop to buy a bottle of Gatorade.

Now, I started to head back towards the hotel. The really big problem? There's a giant hill in the way, the one I walked down on the way here. I slowly trudged along, a group of churches in my sight. One of them had a cache in its yard. It was actually a really, really easy find, but I did try to sign the log ASAP as I was on church property. Did I mention that the churches in this area of the city are just gorgeous?

The next stop was in another graveyard. It was an absolute pain to get to, as there was only one entrance and it was 3 city blocks away from where the cache was hidden. If I had the energy and the courage, I would have jumped the fence, but I had neither, so I took the long away around. As in all graveyards, my GPS signal took a while to settle down, giving me a chance to explore the whole area. There was even someone reading a book under the big tree in the middle of the grounds. There was a really cool coin of Joseph Howe in this cache, but sadly, I had brought no piggies to trade, so I left empty handed.

I headed towards the park where a really cool container was. I could see it as I got close. The only problem? There were two guys playing frisbee next to it. I tried to wait them out, but no luck. I saw that the next cache was near an ice cream place and headed there. Sadly, as I arrived, the person in front of me was being informed that the it was closing. To ensure that it wasn't a total loss, I turned around and went to find the cache instead.

I then went back to the cool container and now the two guys were shirtless and talking to a police officer. I gave up in exasperation and headed back towards the hotel. That was when I realized how tired I was. I had been walking for 7 - 8 hours, and about 7 - 8 blocks from the hotel, all I could think about was how good it would be if could flag down a taxi to take me the rest of the way.