Westport Loop

We decided that since we had not visited the Westport area yet this summer, it would be a good to head that way for on a geocaching run.  I figured out a route that would take us one way and bring us back another, and then created a pocket query for the leg of the route we had not covered before (well, we had, but there were lots of new caches that way, as well as plenty we still had not bothered to look for). 

Well, the first cache along that route was down a side road we never even saw, so we'll look for that another time.  The second one had us stopping at a place where people could launch their boats.  There were picnic tables there, and a decent view, so we may go back someday for a picnic. We've never been there before, but of course, have driven by it many times over the years.  That's what I like best about geocachingt.....finding these nice places you never would have found otherwise.  And the treasure, for me, at this stop was a flower growing in the water by the dock.  I'm used to water lilies, but I've never seen this flower before.  I have no idea what it is.  If you recognize it, please leave a comment.

After that we happened upon a flee market at Crosby.  I  have shown you pictures before of the delapitated looking shelters that we thought used to be used for a flee market. Well, apparently that flee market is still in business, and one of the vendors told us that the stalls had been repaired a lot over the past few years.  It was a very interesting market, and the prices were lower than at most such places.  I got a casserole dish, to replace one that had it's lid go missing a few years ago. It's in excellent shape and only cost $5.  I also got a bag full of metals (or whatever) for a buck. I'll likely put most of them in caches over the next couple of months.  Only two of them were duplicated.  I think at least one of them will find itself in some artistic creation someday, but otherwise most of them can go be cache trinkets.

 

The Flee Market was at the turn off to a little village called Newboro, where there is a big store that I often hear people raving about.  I had never been to the store before, so after tryng to find another cache (that may be missing since the last couple of people didn't find it either) we went to check out the store.  It is quite large, and there is everything imaginable in there, but none of it is cheap.  Up on the third floor, where the furniture was, we found an interesting structure.  It was set up like a pioneer home but roped off so you could only see it from above. 

After we were finished looking around there, we decided to skip the rest of the caches in that village (though we discovered we had actually done two of them before, and never logged them) and go find something to eat.  We headed for Westport, and had a lovely lunch at Steve's Restaurant.   

Then, rather than head to the cottage by our regular route, we scooted back to Hutchings Road near Newboro. We had never been down that road before, but it had two caches hidden along it.  The first was easy to find, and I was able to leave a travel bug at that location.  That was probably making it travel in the wrong direction but I didn't want to hold onto it any longer.  This road was very scenic, with lots of hills and twists and turns.  The second cache was hidden somewhere on a hillside, with lots of big trees, close to the corner of Perth Road, near Bedford Mills.  We never found the cache, but I enjoyed seeing the big old trees.  If you happen to venture down this way, do turn left onto Perth Road and pick up another couple of caches very near by. I'm sure you will enjoy the short loop around the mill pond.  Some good scenes.  

We went from here to the cottage, visited for a very short time with my son and his family (it was about 4:30pm by then and they were packing up to go home anyway). Then we continued our tour, stopping at a few more places on the way home. We went home by the route where there were more caches than on the route coming in, but didn't do them all anyway.  That's okay though, as most of the ones we didn't look for were at the end closer to home and we can go there more easily sometime when we just want to go treasure hunting.

 

Four of the ones we did do on the way home were at various points along Grants Creek. Each time it was at a place where the road crossed the creek, which meant we occasionally had to go down a side road to get to those places.  Again, the sights were worth the trip. 

Actually, there was an old mill at one of these locations too.  I do wish someone would find a use for this building as it looks to be in good shape, other than the broken windows

 

At the other end of that road there was the usual cemetary to explore.  That cache was easy enough to find. The graves were not as old as most grave yards these geocachers tend to take us too. The church was built in 1856. 

It was well after 7pm by this time, so we decided we had had enough for one day, and went home.

Mapping in Uncharted Waters

We did do some more geocaching while on holidays, but life got so hectic I didn't have a chance to post anything about any of that.  

Since then I have acquired a new GPS.  I have a cyber buddy who recently became interested in geocaching, after listening to me tell my tales for the past 4 years.  When he showed me some screen captures of what his gadget could do, I knew it solved my problem.  Normally, when we go geocaching, I print off a stack of pages for the caches we want to find.  Sometimes we don't do all of them and I store the left overs in a binder.  The binder has become rather full, and really, that's a big waste of paper and ink if we never go looking for those caches....or if I get frustrated looking for the right ones and print off new ones. 

My friend's new GPS is a paperless model. That means that he can see whatever is on the web page, right there on the GPS.  He does not have to print off a hard copy like I have had to do.  He also downloaded some more detailed maps, and I can tell you that the maps that come with these units don't show any of the back roads we would normally be travelling, or for that matter the highway that runs through my village.  Oh sorry, it's now a county road....but still, it should be on there.

I had been considering getting either a laptop or a tablet, so we could look up caches where ever we might be.  Of course, you can't always get a signal, so I was hesitating.  Until my friend showed me his Dakota20, I didn't know you could get a paperless GPS.  He had told me what he paid, and thought he got a good bargain.  Then suddenly GPS City was advertising the Dakota20 for a lot less than even my friend paid. And the sale was only good for a couple of days.

Well I have a GPS, so at first I ignored the sale.  Then I thought a bit, and realized the main reason I wanted a tablet, or whatever, was so we could go geocaching where ever we might be.  The GPS was certainly a lot cheaper than a tablet or a laptop, and it would save me a fortune in paper and ink as well.  I quit hesitating and ordered it.

Then the fun began. My friend insisted that I would find the Dakota20 a lot more useful if I downloaded a better map.  There are some you can buy, and there are some you can get for free. I opted to try a free one first, but the Canadian ones were no longer available for direct download so it was suggested I get one by something called Bit Torrent.  What the heck is that?  I went to watch the video that was supposed to guide me though that, but it started out by trying to get me to download the thing that had been disabled.  So much for that.  My friend jumped in and sent me a couple of map files to try, but he didn't tell me how to load them, no matter how many times I asked.

Now, let's consider that I have found at least 209 caches so far, without the aid of a fancy map.  That includes the 4 I've located since this new gadget arrived this week.  We could carry on as we always have, and I'd only have to print a map of the area we were about to cover.  That still saves a lot of paper and ink.  But I'm stubborn, and decided to keep trying, just to see if a fancier map would really make that much of a difference.

Today I finally figured out how to do it.  It took me 3 days....and I used to think I was pretty good at this technical stuff.  When I opened that map though, it wasn't any different than the one I already had....other than that it didn't have the geocaches I'd loaded onto the other one.  Back to square one. But at least now I have a clue how to get the maps to show up on the GPS.  I'll try the other map file tomorrow. I hope loading and deleting multiple maps doesn't fragment the drive on the GPS as that could slow things down.  This is new territory for me, so if you have any advise, I'd be happy to listen.

No Stone Cold Creamery, But Lots of Stone

According to Tim Hortons website, Elgin, Ontario, is one of their locations with a Stone Cold Creamery. That isn't true, (see A Bit of False Advertising Leads to Adventure).  We suspected we wouldn't find a Tim Horton's there, but decided to go geocaching in that direction, just to check it out.  Elgin has no Stone Cold Creamery and no Tim Hortons, and is, as always, just a quiet little village where you wouldn't expect to find such things anyway. 

There are 4 churches there, and a library, and we had to visit each of those in our search for caches.

I must point out that one of the churches now appears to be a home. Can you imagine living in this lovely place?

The library had a cache of it's own, which wasn't hard to find. The dates found at the churches were used to plug into a puzzle to give us the location of the actual cache. Unfortunately, when we got there, there was too much poison parsnip along the trail and I refused to venture in.

A few other caches in the area were down the Cataraqui Trail.  While we found no Stone Cold Creamery that day, we certainly found lots of stone.  When poking about in the rocks in this area, be prepared to come across snakes. I see from some of the cache logs other saw lots of snakes. I found a rather large snakeskin.  While I kind of like snakes, I was just as happy not to have been surprised by the previous owner of this skin.  Anyway, it's a pretty trail to walk, and I'm glad we got the opportunity.

We also gathered caches at the usual couple of graveyards.  We met up with some other geocachers at one near Crosby. ( GC1NMC8 )  They were from Ottawa, but had biked to the cemetery from a cottage in the area.  It took a real team effort to find this cache.  I didn't understand the term "degrees true" in the instructions, but one of the guys had a GPS that showed that.  Mine does not.  So that helped, but still nobody was having any luck locating the actual cache container. 

That's when I let go of the GPS and decided to use my "Spidey Sense" to locate it.  That worked well for me and I amazed everyone by finding it with seconds, even though others had looked in that location.  Sometimes you have to stop thinking so much and just go with instinct.

It was a good day, even if we didn't get any ice cream.