Canadian Caching Adventures

Wow, what a fun filled day yesterday was.



We started out pretty successfully with two map pages which we found speedily, and since we were way up North anyway, we decided to try some caches in Canada.

Flyingfisher, my friend, had been kind of nervous about the whole border crossing thing. I said I will just smile and they will be dazzled by that and we'll cross without problems. She was fretting about what to tell them about our purpose in Canada, it's such a pain to explain geocaching. Her next idea was 'We are going to look at a monument!' but that sounds kind of lame.



We arrive at the border. First thing, she pulls up and immediately gets waved back. We went past the 'Arret!' sign, oops. We backed up and patiently waited till she allowed us to get past the Arret sign.

'Where are you going?'
'To Sutton'
'How long are you staying?'
'A few hours.'
'You are going to go skiing?'
Here flyingfisher hesitated, not wanting to get into the geocaching explanation 'No... um... We are going to go hiking!'
This surprised her 'Hiking???', looking at us suspiciously.
'Yes, hiking!' Flyingfisher couldn't contain herself any longer 'Um... have you ever heard of geocaching????'
This managed to get her face to an even more disapproving look. I wanted to pipe up from the passenger seat 'Yes, that's where you go out and find ammo boxes hidden in the woods!' but thought better of it.
She didn't look very convinced, but after some more talking back and forth, she let us in. Phew!



We were in high spirits. This was going to be flyingfisher's 500th cache find, so pretty special. We were going to show those Canadians how caching is supposed to be done!

The first cache brought us to a nice monument.



We had read the logs, which mostly stated 'Searched for a while, but finally found it'. In French of course, which I can read but not produce while I am typing my blog post. We knew, with the two of us, this was not going to be very hard. I mean, we are experienced cachers AND this was flyingfisher's 500th, what could go wrong???

We searched. And we searched. And we searched. Do you know how many hiding spots there are on an artillery gun like this???




We searched, and we searched and we searched. A micro, eh? Shouldn't be a problem. We'll do it.

Our spirits came down a little... Hmmmm, maybe here? Or here? Or there?

We searched and we looked and we checked every conceivable place. Proving that it must have been hiding in an inconceivable place, since we never found it.



Feh! But don't panic, there is another cache nearby. A cache which was found easily by every single Canadian who went there.

Do I need to say more? Yes, every single Canadian. Not us... So much for our two Canadian caches. DNFs on both of them! I am sure it is all because Canadians are inferior cache hiders, not because we suck at geocaching...



We slunk back to the border. At least the American border patrol officer was way nicer than the Canadian one.

We conversation started out the same:
'How long have you been in Canada?'
'A few hours'
'What was your purpose of visiting?'
Flyingfisher had wizened up 'Recreation!'
'Recreation, eh?'
Again, she broke down and couldn't help herself 'Well, actually, have you ever heard of geocaching????'
She explained the concept to him and he countered with 'Have you ever tried orienteering, with a protractor, so that you don't need satellites?' We had to admit we never had done that and he told us that was way superior over using a GPS.

He was even more convinced of that, when we confessed we couldn't find either of the caches we had tried to find. 'Yeah, clearly should have used a protractor and a map.' He shook his head at our new-fangled way of locating ourselves, but let us back into the States anyway.