The Art of Getting Your Numbers UP!

For all avid geocachers, getting your caching numbers up is the penultimate goal! It's this irrational desire within each and every one of us, to show our supremacy over our fellow cachers and close friends alike. Joe and I often reflect upon our first attempt at collecting a cache, a few blocks from our former residence. The thrill of sneaking around in the middle of the night, stealthily climbing in trees and over fences, and acting strangely casual when muggles came sniffing around, was truly intoxicating! We were hooked from the get go, even though our fist cache eluded us!

It was supposed to be in a pagoda-like structure situated in a lovely little area, directly outside a bustling bank! We knew the cache was quite small, and we knew it was magnetic, so we of course assumed that it would be attached to this giant metal structure. For three nights straight, we combed over the area, meticulously inspecting every nook and cranny. But unfortunately night after night, we came home empty handed. Finding a geocache couldn't be that difficult, could it? 

Joe checked the logs for that particular cache, and nothing insinuated that it had gone missing. So, he messaged the owner of the cache to help us out. The owner, being the jerk-face that he was, said that the cache was still there and that we were lame nubes with zero finds, and therefore lacked the appropriate experience to find a stupid magnet stuck to a hunk of metal! A few days later however, the owner logged this cache as missing. VICTORY WAS OURS! A year later, we have 174 caches found and 1 cache hidden under our belt, and very VERY few failures. 

The Bruce Trail - A Perfect Place To Get Your Numbers Up!

A month ago, our friend's Neil and Mary messaged us to go caching with them in Orangeville. Apparently Neil had found a string of over 100 caches lining a section of the Bruce trail. The geocaches were so close together that it presented a good opportunity for us to collect a huge number in one day. So, off we went with Mary, Neil and their adorable little baby Ryan, for a day of caching frenzy! How many did we manage to get that day out of the possible 100 or so treasures you may ask? 3! The mosquitos were so bad that Joe came home looking like he had the mumps, and even though I only had one bite, it was right on my lip and swelled up to the size of a chocolate covered almond! So, we decided to come back on a less damp, mosquito ridden day, and that day was last Saturday.

As you can see by the map below, the trail is lined with a multitude of caches in very close proximity to one another. The green squares indicate the caches we still have yet to find. The yellow happy faces at the bottom of the map, are the caches that we've already found. As you can plainly see, we still have a lot of work to do!

We started our day last Saturday on the Bruce Trail just off of Mississauga Road. We figured we could work our way towards the caches we had already found to bridge the gap, and then if the day was going well, we could start going north to collect a few more. Our first cache of the day was called, "Resting in Loving arms", and even though it had quite an auspicious name it proved to be a rather disturbing find. 

I assumed the geocache was situated in the loving embrace of a nearby clump of trees. So I veered off the path and into the woods. Sure enough within minutes, I could see a small camouflaged container shoved between the trunks of three intertwining trees. I could SEE the cache, but there was NO WAY I was going to stick my hand in and retrieve the cache, because at the base of the tree was a pile of bones, picked clean by god who knows what kind of predator! When I yelled out, "Hey guys there's a pile of bones here!", Neil asked if they were chicken bones. I said, "No they look like a pile of small femurs!"

Now I'm no expert, but there are definitely some vertebrae, and potentially arms and legs in there. If anyone can identify these, drop me a line. The skull was missing so there was very little else to help us identify them, and I wasn't about to touch them in any way. In any case, we logged the geocache online and went on our merry way! (BTW, if the owner of the cache put these here, not cool man!)

The day progressed rather nicely. Overall we managed to snag an additional 8 geocaches. Most of the caches lining this trail are named after geographical locations and were placed there by the same person. We found Barbados, Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Cuba, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. To be honest the majority of the caches were rather uninspired, easy to find and were in yogurt containers. So, either the person who placed them there worked at Yoplait or was a HUGE yogurt enthusiast. As pictured below, we did manage to find one really interesting geocache, that was built into a carved piece of wood and gingerly placed in the crevice of an old stump.

Strike a pose Joe!

All in all, we had a fantastic day, but in the end the excessive heat and pesky insects made us turn back early once more. We'll be back however, perhaps in the fall when the mosquitos won't tear us to shreds. The draw of conquering this string of geocaches is far too enticing to give up on. It may take us multiple tries, but I'm confident that one day that long green string of unattained caches will be replaced with smiling yellow happy faces, and our numbers will take a healthy leap forward. Happy caching!

Below are some more pictures from that day. GOOD TIMES!

Neil and Joe displaying the same caching technique!

Mary looking sad from all the nasty bug bites!