Geocaching Adventures

 

Many years ago, we were new to geocaching and decided to hide a geocache on this hill. Cees was the official hider.

 

The cache was quite a hike up, but pretty popular and people really liked the view. But one day this year, the ammo box which was the geocache just disappeared. Into nothingness. Which is not totally unheard of, but in this case the people who took the ammo box did leave the contents of the cache. So there was one wet and soon becoming slimy and moldy geocache left.

 

I saw the notes from geocaching.com but many other shiny things were vying for my attention, so never made it up to do maintenance and replace the cache.

 

Yesterday we finally did! The cache is a nice new container and back in perfect condition. Not only that but we found two new to us caches AND we hid another cache.

 

Being out in the woods is good for my soul. There is a sense of calmness and adventure and happiness which gets into me when I go out caching even if there is much whining and groaning and moaning and gnashing of teeth.

 

We found out that exercise induced asthma does get induced by geocaching, what a surprise. Next time I will bring the albuterol for sure. It wasn't too bad because we could take plenty of breaks, but it's a good reminder to think a bit more deeply when preparing for a caching trip.

 

Not to mention that I am out of the habit of always carrying at least one working flashlight with me. Which clearly tells me we haven't been geocaching enough, since we will inevitably end up in the woods after dark. Not yesterday, but often enough in the past.

 

I am totally motivated to hide more caches and of course find more of them too. In my spare time that is. Oh wait...

 

Today I found out that two of my acquaintances were on the lake while we were climbing the hill that overlooked the lake. I didn't notice any of them, but it was one of those 'small world moments' to find out we were all in the same general area.

 

Mushrooms Mushrooms EVERYWHERE!

This fall I seem to see mushrooms everywhere, even at places where I usually don't.
These small round ones are on Sylvia's maple tree in my front yard, of all places.

 

Jane saw this picture and said 'Oh, a pancake with maple syrup!' She looked at me with an unbelieving face when I told her 'Nope, it's a mushroom!' Like, yeah right, I can easily see it really is a pancake with maple syrup.

 

She did believe me when I zoomed out more and was amazed. So was I when I found this mushroom with weird oozing fungi on top while I was heeding the call of nature. At least I had something interesting to look at.

 

 

 

The last few pictures are all from yesterday's caching trip. I love how many different types of mushrooms and lichen there are. Some day, in my spare time, I will study them.

 

For now I will just photograph and enjoy them. If anyone recognizes any of these, I would love you to tell me the name. Thanks!

 

 

Finally Geocaching Again!

This past summer has been so busy, between kids activities and house selling, that we didn't get to go geocaching at all. We didn't go hiking much either. Or did many extra activities. We did clean the house a lot though.

 

Selling a house really feels like a full time task. Every time anybody puts anything out of place, I have to fix it now, or be stuck with picking up 835 things hours before the next showing.

 

The days that we didn't have showings it is easy to just relax and not go anywhere, but we did miss our hikes and our geocaching.

 

Yesterday finnally we got to go geocaching again! It was a nearby cache, so we didn't have to drive far, which is always a nice bonus. The kids were full of energy which did lag a bit once we starting climbing that hill.

 

And up and up and up we went. We had a few requests for 'Can we take a rest' and I happily agreed to it, so we could sit and chat and pretend we didn't have to climb even more.

 

This hill is a popular sledding hill in the winter.

 

The view at the top is amazing, I love looking over the lake like this!

 

UBF

Yes, we still do exist. And yes, we are still selling the darned house. But today we took the day off to finally go geocaching again!

 

Erik found this UBF. You might wonder what IS an UBF???? So did I. Erik explained to me that it stood for Unusually Big Feather. I agree, it is pretty big. We wondered what bird it came from. Maybe a pheasant or a grouse?

 

Any ideas? Please comment if you know which kind of feather it is.

Erik:
GIVE ME A U!!! GIVE ME A B!!! GIVE ME A F!!! UBF ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Olympic Tower

 

The Olympic tower in Montreal is the highest inclined tower in the world, with its 165-metre elevation and 45-degree angle. The Tower of Pisa, by comparison, has a 5-degree angle.

 

They have an elevator / funicular which is two stories high and can accomodate 76 people at a time. It has two stories!

 

We were lucky that we got to ride on the second story both on our way up and our way down.

 

The view was spectacular and we spent quite some time trying to figure out what is what.

 

The easiest to spot was amusement part La Ronde. The ferris wheel sure helped in identifying it.

 

Naturally that led to my kids to want to visit La Ronde, but I didn't think I wanted to add it to an already full day :D

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Animals

 

We really enjoyed seeing all the animals and biospheres in the Biodome.

 

Dawn made many pictures, although it is hard because you aren't allowed to use flash.

 

The porcupines looked quite lazy, made me wonder whether they had been hanging out with the sloths too much....

 

All the signs were in French and English, which added to the excitement of being in foreign territory ^^

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the Biodome, we made our way to the Olympic Tower, which rises over Montreal.