Today, 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.

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!

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.

Today we went on our first geocaching trip. Geocaching is essentially a scavenger hunt, or a treasure hunt. People place a log (perhaps a piece of paper or a small notebook) along with other small trinkets into a box of some sort. The box can range anywhere from a film canister or a magnetic key holder to a larger plastic container. The other small trinkets are often identifiable to a particular person or team (like a wooden token with your name on it, or some home-made craft or some such), or sometimes just other small things. There are also geocaching “coins” which are numbered tokens whose location are tracked (via geocaching.com), and also “travel bugs” which are something other than tokens (usually something larger, like a small toy or something) that are also tracked on geocaching.com. After placing the cache, they are logged on some website (geocaching.com, terracaching.com, etc) where others then check to see what caches might be near them. For example, right now on geocaching.com, there are 3336 caches within 100 km of our condo!

Which brings us to today. As I’ve mentioned, I got a GPSr for my birthday. Today was the first day that we were able to get out and specifically go looking for some caches. I downloaded some local caches to the GPSr and loaded them up to my PDA too. The GPSr takes care of locating the cache while the PDA takes care of providing the details of the cache like what it is, and the hints on how to find it. The closest cache was one located on the bridge to Charleson Park. Gwen & I headed out with Aidan in the stroller and used the GPSr to get pretty close to the cache. Gwen climbed up on to the bank, looked under the ivy, and just like that, we’d found our first cache. The cache was a medium sized lock box with a bunch of stuff inside. Buoyed by that find, we made our way down to Granville Island where the next cache was located. This one was under a bridge, and while I was looking for it, it turns out that the person who placed the cache wandered by! She asked if we were geocaching, and told us we were close. Alas, I couldn’t find it, but Gwen went in and found it in no time.

We then went into the Kids Market and bought ourselves some tokens that we can place into the cache instead of just writing our name into the log. For us, it’s $0.50 stretchy-plastic speckled frogs. (♫ Five green and speckled frogs, sat on a speckled log, eating the most delicious bugs… ♫)

[audio:FiveLittleFrogs.mp3]

The next cache, also on Granville Island, was a bit humbling. Apparently a magnetic key holder located near the west end of the island. I’m pretty sure we had the right location, but we couldn’t find the cache. We sure got quite a number of weird looks from the tourists milling around too. The pressure got to us, and we bolted.

The next cache was located at the feet of a totem pole near the Burrard Bridge on the Seawall. Once again, I looked for it but couldn’t find it. And, once again, Gwen found it with little difficulty. This one was also a magnetic key holder, with room for little other than a piece of paper for logging the find.

Next up was a larger cache … a reasonably large plastic jar … behind the Vancouver Academy of Music. This one apparently used to have a number of musical instruments in it, but when we Gwen found it, there weren’t any there. We had bought some small wooden castanets and left them in the cache. Our last attempt for the day was one up on the train line near 7th and Burrard. The clue was unclear as to what we were looking for (it was part of a multi-part cache) so while we were at the right place according to the GPSr, we didn’t actually look for the cache.

So, for the day, Gwen was 4/5! It was lots of fun, an we look forward to finding lots more caches. We were all tired by the end of the day, some 4+ hours of walking and searching, a little over 8 km according to the GPSr.