geocaching.gifToday, we went geocaching in Queen Elizabeth Park. The park has at least 6 different caches, only had time for two. Well, actually it’s a bit more complicated than that…

When we got back to the park, again (we forgot the PDA with the cache notes the first time), we were parked pretty close to a cache, and so started with that one! This cache was the start of a multi-stage cache. This means that the first stage contains information on how to find the second stage, the second tells you how to find the third, and so on. The GPSr got us pretty close — right beside a tennis court — and after a little bit of searching, I found a magnetic key holder stuck inside a metal overhang/flashing. That’s right kiddies, I found one. Inside the cache was a laminated piece of paper with a new set of coordinates and what seemed to be a Roman numeral III or maybe a drawing of a ladder, we’re not sure. Going to the new location, which was beside the lawn bowling club, we had some problems. There wasn’t anywhere obvious where the cache was hidden, and we didn’t have any clues other than the coordinates. We searched for quite some time and then decided to go look for a different cache.

So we headed up the hill a bit and discovered that the parks board apparently installed a pedestrian plaza beside the Bloedel Conservatory, replete with a huge fountain and what seemed to be bus shelters. It’s hard to explain. The weather was gorgeous, so we let Aidan out of the stroller and run around a bit. Well, kinda. Gwen kept pretty close tabs on him.

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After spending quite a bit of time at the fountain, we made our way down the hill a bit to the next cache. This one was a bit frustrating. It was in and about a clump of trees, so the GPSr wasn’t great in locating the cache. And the hint was “Between the tree and the boulder”. In a park. Do you know (a) how many trees are there? and (b) how many boulders are there? Worst. Clue. Ever. Seriously. So, we pushed the “mall stroller” up and down a rain-saturated lawn, several times, looking around every single tree and boulder combination we could find. There were many. I looked under one particular tree that happened to have quite a thorny bush beneath. Or so I discovered once I dropped to my knees to look closer and duck under some branches. I can’t believe there wasn’t blood.

Gwen picked up one box she thought was the cache and, um, it turned out to be a rat trap. Ewwwww. And then she found another. Didn’t pick that one up, though.

We spent quite a bit of time looking for that darned box. Eventually I gave Gwen the GPSr and not 5 minutes later she called that she had the box. Keeping score? Gwen: 4, Anthony: 1.

This particular cache is the Vancouver Travel Bug Hub. Inside the cache box, there were tonnes of travel bugs! The picture below (taken near, but not at the cache location) shows what we found in it!

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We didn’t take anything, but we’ll be sure to visit this cache before we go travelling next (when ever that will be).

On our way back to the car we tried to find the second stage of the multi-cache again. And once again we were stymied. Fatigued but not defeated, we headed home. Where I discovered that there were clues to the other stages, but they weren’t available on the PDA! The clue for the second stage was, of course, to look for the cache 100 ft south of the given coordinates! Huh? No wonder we didn’t find it. Maybe we’ll head back out tomorrow to close this one off.