RCMP_shield_crest_1.jpgWell, when I got up this morning, I certainly didn’t expect to be answering questions at the Burnaby Detachment of the RCMP today. But plans never seem to go as expected.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Today, after having a not-quite-total-loss of a weekend due to incompatible schedules with the boy and Gwen, and due to uncooperative weather, we were determined to get some geocaching in.

I located a suitable cluster 10 caches within a 1 km radius out in South Burnaby and we were off around 10:30am. The weather was overcast with light showers, typical for the weekend. We picked up the first cache pretty easily; it was a drive by in a small park underneath the SkyTrain.

The second cache, however, seemed to be in someone’s hedge (street side) on a quiet residential street. With plenty of people around this Labour Day, including what seemed to be a pack of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Gwen made a quick check, but the muggle pressure was getting to be too much.

Fortunately, there were a few more caches nearby, and they didn’t prove too elusive. After grabbing those ones, we tried again with the one in the hedge, and this time came up with a purse. I checked in the purse to see if it was a poor choice of a cache location, but no. In fact, it was full of someone’s ID. We hit the GPS and got it to route us to the nearest police station.

The Burnaby RCMP detachment is in Deer Lake Park, and beside the Burnaby Village Museum. We’d not been to any of the detachment, the park, or the museum, so it was quite in line with the spirit of why we do the geocaching!

The conversation at the detachment, though, was a little uncomfortable.

Me: I found this purse and noticed it had ID in it. We brought it here right away.

RCMP: Where did you find it?

Me: I found it underneath the hedge at this address (gives the nice lady a parking receipt with an address scribbled on the back)

RCMP: What were you doing underneath the hedge at that address?

Me: Um … have you heard of geocaching?

RCMP: No.

It went downhill from there. There a few more questions on where I found it, who’s house it was, and what it was I was doing there. Then she asked me to leave my name, phone number, address, and the time I discovered the purse … and the nice lady scribbled it all down on the back of the parking receipt.

On leaving the RCMP detachment, we noticed that there was a Carousel advertising free admission! The carousel is part of the Burnaby Village Museum — a real, old-style carousel with a mechanical music machine, and old-style horses going up and down, and the works. Aidan had a blast! After sucking us in with the free carousel, we paid the admission to go into the Village Museum, where they had face painting, a touchless petting-zoo, and turn-of-the-century (the 20th century, that is) demonstrations of smithing, farming, cars (ok, slightly after turn-of-the-century), and general “what life was like” exhibits and buildings. It was much more extensive than I expected (although not quite Sherbrooke Village).

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Gwen and Aidan rode the carousel again on our way out of the Village Museum, despite the (now) incredible line-up.

We left the park and decided to go back to the park we were in before, to pick up a few more caches — in particular one where there was a Travel Bug that hadn’t moved for quite some time. We picked up one, and headed down the hill for the other, only to discover we were decidedly on the wrong side of a very steep ravine. We piled the (now) cranky toddler back into the car, threw the gear back in the car and drove around to the other side. It was a successful TB rescue.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat (um, 4pm … but we had snacks, drinks, and a “pizza bread” for Aidan during our sojourn) and headed back into Vancouver to dump the TB collection we had amassed.

It was pretty close to 7pm when we arrived back.

So, the day didn’t quite turn out as expected, but the rain held off, we had fun, discovered a new part of the city we wouldn’t have visited otherwise, and at the moment I’m not in jail.

What will next weekend bring?