Days of Yore...

It may come as no surprise to anyone that we have been out geocaching a few times since the previous post. It is not quite all we live for but it does occupy a good deal of our thoughts, actions and goingsout...
Today is a housekeeping day...cleanup, shopping, thrift store...etc.
The weather is not always ideal, and sometimes, like on Tuesday, we were out in the rain a good deal. We had decided to 'take care of' the Cultus Lake area, hoping to set a record. So far our high for one day is 17. Well, we should have stayed home: instead of 17 Founds we had 8 DNF's instead...and that was a record, but not the kind we need or ever hope to break. By the way, we had coffee with someone yesterday whose high for one day is 41 Founds...I did not ask him how he managed that but my hunch is that he started at daylight, sometime at 4am, and finished sometime before midnight...
We are not quite that addicted yet...but give us time.
I am including a couple of pictures. The one is in Yarrow at the end of Wilson Rd. It was the site of the first post office. That is where the Old Yale Wagon Road ran along the mountain before Sumas Lake was drained. An interesting cache, that one...
I am also showing a couple of pictures of a place on the corner of Glover and 216th in Langley. The one shows the vintage car and the Texaco pumps, the other a close up of the price at the pump in those days...and that is price per gallon!
I see that the weather in your areas is improving so... soon out you go...
I will try to get around to posting another one later today, showing some of our results of yesterday...

Ditch Jumper

We are having quite a nice week as far as the weather goes...but today was the first day that we could go out to do some caches...13 founds and 1 DNF...don't like those...
I will not take the dear readers of this blog through all of them...let me just acquaint you with the fact that someone has placed a cache at every mile stone along the Fraser Highway. This high way used to be the first and only road from Vancouver to Yale although it changes names in Abbotsford to Yale Road...Along the road were mile stones telling the weary traveler that he had gone another mile, and was now one mile closer to the goldfields near Yale in the Fraser Canyon. Most of these mile stones are gone but some remain. All the bright yellow paint that they once had is gone but the 'engraving' of the number is still there. Today we saw #32 and #34. The picture above shows that it was a bit of a jump to get to it...
I volunteered to stay on the safe side to take the picture.
We had a very nice day. Tomorrow we hope have another one.

Smell our Spring...

Just a nice picture to show that things are coming back to life, even those that we like to avoid...

Crawlies and Boos...

I thought we should share with you some of the more unusual finds we come across...Do the pictures say enough?
Hope you can all go at it soon...but if it is any comfort, it snows here too, today, yesterday, but we cannot be deterred by that...

One Hundred!!!! (and counting)

It was March 19, the first day of spring they say, something we oldies will probably never get used to: spring is supposed to start on the 21st! Regardless, we went out caching anyhow instead sitting at home moping because spring had sprung on us two days early.
We knew we were at 99 finds. We had always wanted to do the Downtown Sitdown, a five-stage multi, created by the Kardian Questers (the Archie Kobes family). We had known forever that it was there and that we were very close to it everyday we were at the shop...and that we should do it soon and all that...and then we had Archie come into the shop...and that did it...we decided to make it our one hundredth. So we did. The cache centers around the artistic benches we have on several downtown corners. The pics show two of them. At each we had to pick up some info to put together the coords for the final one which was not downtown but under a tree some 3 km away...can't explain why they did not put the final downtown as well. Maybe they couldn't get the coords to come together with the skimpy information that is available on each bench.
It is not a difficult cache but it took some time. But it gave us our centennial find. We have in the meantime started on our second century.
How is everyone else coming along??? Eh???

Retired and Caching

Blogging is falling behind on our caching. Logging the finds on geocaching.com is not my favourite part of geocaching. The fun is in the finding, sometimes in the being stumped, but to come home to WORK on logging...no...But, of course, there is no way around it so it is done. And then on top of that write a blog? It does not always happen, sorry to say, and so the faithful readers of this blog miss out on some eventful happenings and interesting finds. Well, there is a remedy for that: out you go, snow or no snow, and you create your own eventful happenings and find your own interesting finds. Way to go, Jocelyn. A few feet of snow never stopped you, right?
Today we found another neat one. The picture tells the story. What it does not show is the two muggles, two big dogs barking their heads off less than six inches away from the cache. Fortunately, there was a solid fence. Still, you want to watch your fingers.
We are now at 92 caches found, creeping ever closer to the magic number of 100 when we will get an honourable mention on bc geocaching.com for the entire province to know...
Just saw a post from someone who has over 6200...go figure...
We saw some cormorants in Elwood Park today. Never seen them in town before. Never been in Elwood Park for that matter.
Tomorrow promises to be the one remaining somewhat dry day for this week so we hope to be out again...maybe there will be another blog for you...
I have been thinking of putting a restriction on this blog so people cannot post comments so that they may begin to feel an urge to send comments...so that when the tension is high enough to take off the restriction so that ... anyway, I will not put a restriction on...not yet...but be warned!
And yes, spring is here...

An Incredible Week...

Too much has happened since my last blogging...too much to take care of in one post...no matter how much i would like to record all that happened. It comforts me somewhat to know that most of our readers were all part of what happened so they don't really need to be informed. So we will see where this goes...before it goes off into blogland.
By Friday night (the 15th) everyone had arrived who was expected. The next day the eight of us took off for the Chilliwack River Road to spend a day of caching. It was cloudy and sometimes a little drizzly, but most of the day was okay.
I will not record every cache we did and found. Some of the caches we (mom and I, or me, if you prefer) had done already, others were new to us too. Regardless of who found which one, everyone thoroughly enjoyed him or herself (or themselves, if you prefer) and all were bitten by the caching bug...and we all enjoyed the beautiful area we were in.
When most of us decided that enough was enough Henk and Alfred decided to do the remaining caches. And they did, finding each one. I forget the exact total of caches we did that day but it was a goodly number although not a record. I believe that our record is 13 for one day.
I am not sure anymore whether there was one day that we did not go out during the next week. Our group was shrinking as Henk left again on Monday, Thelma on Tuesday, Erica and Alice on Friday and finally, Peter and Petra yesterday.
I am not sure either how many caches we did in all during this period. It does not really matter. More important is the wonderful time we had together, caching or not.
I am incredibly thankful for the wonderful week God gave us, and judging by the reports of each, it was truly great for everyone whether it was a week or just a couple of days of being part of it in person. I hope everyone is already planning for a repeat next year...:)
Of course, we took loads of pictures, and of course, there is no way I can attach them all to this blog. I will let mom decide which ones are going to be it.
I wish Garmins were less expensive so we could buy one for each of you. But I am afraid it ain't going to happen...Sorry... I am very happy for Len and Thelma that they have one they can use and made history with their first cache.

Record in the Sun...

The sun was out...for the first time in a long time...so we decided to take the day off (again?Alfred is grumbling, I am sure) and go do guess what. Yes, indeed, how did you guess. And we set a record...12 caches in one day.

We stayed around town and found some more parks I had never been in. You've all driven east on Downes Rd. from Mt. Lehman and seen all the trees and woods on your right before you come to MEI. Well, that is Downes Park, parts of it also known as Clearbrook Park and other parts also known as Ron Wiebe Playing Fields. Don't have a clue who Ron Wiebe was, maybe a geocacher...

The most interesting cache was called Stairway to Hell/Heaven. The trail leads to a set of about 8 sets of stairs going down...easy...but a few hundred feet farther you go up about the same number...puff, puff, puff...Never been there either; didn't know it existed. According to Mom there are more stairs farther up/down...hurray!!! Maybe I will go there one day...Perhaps we could hide a cache there for you to find...The picture at the top gives you a bit of an idea...

The forecast for tomorrow is guess what: rain. The forecast for Saturday: sun! And for Sunday: sun. And also for Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday...past that we don't believe the weather man no matter what he says.

So in a few hours Henk will be here, and then one more night of sleep and y'all be here. Hurray!!!

Getting too excited...better stop.

Good night and see ye...

It dawns on me only now that most of you won't even read this before you read this. Too bad; it is such a happy story.

Love y'all,

Dad and Mom, Dad and Sandy, Grandpa and Grandma, Opa and Grandma...

Must some rain fall in our life?

Yes, already another post.! If it is too much, you can wait a few days to read this one.
Today was Saturday (which means a day not interrupted by work) and, in spite of the rain, we left home at 9:15 to head for the Cheam Wetlands, a place I had never heard of before but where the Chilliwack Naturalists had scheduled a walk-about to look at birds and nature in general. I am not sure if fog and rain are part of nature but we had it in abundance. The place is an old marl quarry, marl being something like limestone. It is believed that about 5000 years ago the peak of one of the mountains in the Cheam chain came sliding down and filled the valley, re-routing the Fraser and causing all kinds of other things. Did not see a lot of birds, except for on our way back in the Sumas Prairie: about 600 swans in a field.
The walk-about did not take that long so after it was over we set ourselves to find a cache in that area. Quite a quick and nice find by the lady cacher.
After that, on our way out, we stopped at 'The Mint' and located another one, placed there by some people from Amsterdam. (Hence the name: it is a tower in A'dam which onced housed the Mint). Then we went into the Bridal Falls park and found yet another one. We walked all the way up to the Falls but once again found it very hard to take a good picture of it. But regardless, it was a nice walk and the weather had improved a bit by then.
On our way home we stopped in Sardis to pick up a boterkoek that Kirstin had baked for us. We were home around 4, nicely in time for a short nap.
On that sleepy note I will leave you for now.
The picture shows you a scene of the Cheam Wetlands.
Love, Dad and Mom

Caching in the Snow

Yes, you can sing that to the familiar tune...

There has not been a lot of activity in this blog off late simply because there has not been a lot of geocaching activity lately. The weather has been very uncooperative and, unfortunately, there is really no improvement in sight. So those of you who are soooooo looking forward to joining us in this, be prepared with rain gear and perhaps snowshoes.

Seeing that the shop has been slow, we have been out a couple of times but not for very long and nothing much to report. Yesterday we finally did what we had been planning for some time: scout the area where we want to take our guests next Saturday. So we ignored the rain and cold and went to the Chilliwack River Road. Our aim was to find a number of caches along this road so that when we take you there, we can just stay in the car in case it is raining heavily or snowing...

Our first two finds were not that hard. The second one confronted us with a 'snake' as you can see. Trying to park before we went for the next one landed us in a snowbank and stuck. But the pusher in our relationship got us out again. Too bad we did not take a picture of that. The third cache required a bit of a hike up a fairly snowy hill but we found it.

We are still excited about this hobby. It takes us places we have not really 'seen' before, it gets us out of the house in the fresh (very fresh) air, we are dealing with challenges, we are doing it together and yes, we are looking forward to letting you share in it and perhaps be bitten by the bug as well.

Today we went out again to re-visit two sites that have so far skunked us to see if we could solve them now. Alas, still not. We have to take you guys there and help us. One is in the park right behind us, of all things.

See you in a week or sooner...