Mother's Day

 Starting point of the world's longest

national highway, the Trans Canada.

 It streches 7,821 km (4,860 mi) from Victoria, BC to St. John's, NFLD.


Last weekend Laerok and I had set out to do some caching along Dallas Rd, but our GPS glitched while loading the caches. We didn't realize this until we had got to Mile '0' and turned it on. Luckily, we had a bunch we had yet to find closer to home. 
 

On the starting date of our challenge (April 1st) Laerok and I took his Mom (a 'muggle' a the time) out to try caching. She liked it so much that on Mother's Day she signed up as an official Geocacher! She will now be refered to as 'Spirit_Shadow'.

Early Mother's Day morning Laerok and I picked up Spirit_Shadow for a day of caching. Caching supplies and a working GPS in hand we set out to tackle some of the caches along Dallas Rd. We started again at Mile '0'. It was nice for Laerok and I to finally find this one. On our first date just over a year ago we did some caches in this area and this one must have been moved or 'muggled' because we tried for about half an hour with no luck.

We continued East to Beacon Hill Park. This park is generally busy on any given day, but being Mother's Day and a sunny one at that, the park was extremely busy. Stealth would have to be of utmost importance as to not draw attention to ourselves. I'm not sure if it was because it was an early morning, or in Laeork's case, being up for 31 hours, or we were still waiting for the coffee to kick in, but 'Marilyn Bell' gave us a few minutes of difficulity. We had to think about the hint a little harder, but we got it in the end.

We back tracked a little bit to the cruise ship terminal. Unfortunately, there weren't any in port today. 'Cruisin into Victoria - Take 2' has a wonderful view of The Land and Sea mural by Darlene Gait (http://www.onemoon.ca/). Darlene is a local Coast Salish artist, and Spirit_Shadow's cousin!

We worked our way back into Beacon Hill Park where there were a few caches in walking distance. My Grandmother lives a few blocks away and as a kid I spent many weekends here, so it is always nice to come back and explore, as I don't get much of a chance now to get this far into town.

From Beacon Hill we traveled away from the water to 'Olive Street Common'. This QEF (quick, easy find) was located in a neat little park, complete with a sitting area and swings. From there we tried our hand at 'BOB1 (Beast of Burden 1)'. The terrain rating on this one is a bit off. It is rated as 2/1.5. My cache for 'She sells seashells by the sea shore' has a higher terrain rating! Unless you are some kind of mountain goat, this should be more around a 3/3.5. We searched for quite some time before we had the cache in hand. Beautiful views of the Olympic Mountains in Washington State and downtown Victoria from the top, so I can't complain too much.

We finished our day back at the water with a few more caches along at various beaches on Dallas Rd. The weather started to turn a bit crappy (not that is usually stops us) and Laerok had been up for almost 30 hours at this point. Overall we managed to find 16. Tied our best for the day. A little disappointed in ourselves with being so far behind on the challenge. The unofficial start to camping season starts this week! Laerok, my self and a group of friends are heading up to the Nitnat area for a few days of camping. We hope to get out and do some caches in the area. Along our way is the oldest active geocache on Vancouver Island (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=1690595f-680c-4d16-ae63-6271cae1498e)! We are really hoping to get this one.

Special thanks to Spirit_Shadow for coming out with us!
Remember, CITO

-Sarah-Bellum





Here's Hoping

In seven hours we will embark on setting a new personal goal. Being Mother's Day, we have invited my mother to join us. She joined us on April first, our first day of our challenge, and did extremely well. We are going to start the day off registering her as a new cacher. Then attack Mile Zero and the surrounding area of Beacon Hill Park.

Last weekend we found sixteen caches in about three and a half hours. We will push to find forty, mostly to try and catch up.

We are continuing to have problems loading GPX files onto our GPS. I have a feeling its due to being close to out of memory. I have tried saving the files to the added SD card where I have maps loaded, but still no luck. I will spend the next few hours hunting through google to locate an answer to why this is happening. Worst case scenario I'm sure I can contact THE GEOKNIGHTS for assistance, as I know they have the same model GPS.

Here's hoping for a solution.

-Laerok

The Light at the End of the Tunnel Seemed Brighter.

Caching in Brentwood Bay, BC

 We are 34 days into our challenge and things arn't looking so good. We must maintain an average of 84 finds each month to attain our goal. In this time i have only located 51 caches, while Sarah-Bellum has found 52. Not a great start...

I met the cacher Sole Seeker at work on Wednesday April 27th/11. I asked him how many caches he can get done in a day. He told me he once found 630 caches in 24 hours. WOW. He assured me that the more caching I do, the easier it will be to find a cache once at the cache location. After viewing his profile he has logged over 17,000 caches in six years. I cannot imagine ever logging that many caches in the same amount of time. All in all, he was a very nice guy and I actually felt honoured to meet him. Sort of like meeting some one famous.

We have had a few accomplishments. We had visited RACE10: The Bone Yard (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=4644a8dd-a274-4cca-9d66-b751b6ff4f64) two previous times before finally making the find! Okay we cheated, I called THE GEOKNIGHTS for help, and with those tips we found the cache. We had looked right at the cache container so many times, that I became instantly furious upon discovery. As well as finding SSS (Sidney Spin String) (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=5ccf43dd-e58f-4e98-bf8c-4d79af423fe9), we had to really stop and think about how the name came into play with the the cache location.

On Sunday May 1st, we had set out around eleven am to log some caches. We had started our day off heading toward down town Victoria. Once at Mile Zero in Beacon Hill Park, we turned on our GPS to discover none of the GPX files had actually downloaded. We had turned around to log some caches near home. We had to leave our first cache un found as we spent over twenty minutes trying to locate it. We  have noticed our procedure in locating a cache has changed since we have first started. Instead of searching for ground zero, we get close and then start searching for possible locations for the cache to be or going to what the hint describes. I'm sure that these are standard actions for most, we had to learn them the hard way.



"Tying our shoe laces" for
several minutes

 The great summer weather seems to bring on more muggles to popular areas. We had to tie our shoes for several minutes at Island View Beach to uncover, open, sign the logbook and re hide it in its hiding spot.

Even with a rough start we had a rather fruitful day in comparison to previous days spent caching. We had managed to log 16 caches. Yes I know some may find that on their drive home from work, but I am proud to find an increase in my one day find totals.

We began our challenge on April first, accompanied by my mother. It was her first time caching. We are going to return to the Beacon Hill Park with my mother for another full day of logging caches. Hopefully she does not check in on this blog as I had completely forgotten it was mothers day this coming Sunday (May 8th 2011). I guess things panned out...

Every May long weekend we head out into the bush for a 5 day long camping trip. I have recently learned that on our drive up past Youbou, we will pass the oldest active cache placed on Vancouver Island. I am counting the days until we can log Waterfalls of Rain (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=1690595f-680c-4d16-ae63-6271cae1498e).

Butterfields Farm Cache Location

Any tips any experienced cachers can pass on to two cahcers just starting out?


-Laerok

Month #1, April.

The cache totals for April are:

Sarah-bellum:  52 Found, 2 Hidden (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=0a524921-768b-4999-b951-e6513cb46d48, http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=64678c9d-e296-4ddb-b588-9ffe5ef653cd)

Laerok:  51 Found, 1 Hidden (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=65d7c3f0-c0c6-463b-9bbe-548d0794fba7)