Mt Wells

Well… I’ve finally decided to hike Mt Wells. I’ve been wanting to do this hike for a while, but never got around to it because I usually end up rock climbing here. This was my first hike of the summer so I’m a little bit out of shape. Luckily this was a fairly easy hike. So I think we’re off to a good start! And of course, had to grab a couple of geocaches on the way up.

This used to be a working 44km concrete aqueduct that went from Sooke Lake to the Humpback Reservoir. Then from the reservoir it would transport the water down to Victoria. But now it’s not needed.

You can see Mt Finalyson in the distance (the really round mountain).

At the summit.

In the next picture, on the right, that’s Mt MacDonald – another place to rock climb!

Old Copper Mine At East Sooke Park

Chad, Kevin, and I went to East Sooke Park for a day of geocaching at the end of August. We found a loop we could do – about 12.5km round trip, and around 30 caches. It was a good day. I kept hearing about this abandoned mine there, so we decided to check it out today. Here’s the few pictures I took.

Unfortunately the cave wasn’t as deep as we thought it would be. It was about 35ft… It was still cool though.

Chad and I decided to drop off a couple of Travel Bugs at the cache site.

Geocaching Block Party 2013

Shannon and I decided to go to Seattle on Aug 17th for the day to check out the Geocaching Block Party 2013. Before we got down there, we had to pick up a few caches so the block party would be Shannon’s 1000th find. We also did a little shopping as well. Sooooo we were just a little late, but caught the tail end of it and still had a great time!

Blue Moon Burgers… We’ll be back for you later! Great food!

Signed the board to prove I was there!

Like I’ve said earlier, Shannon and I arrived really late, but it was still cool wandering around the area. They had different booths, free swag, and a bunch of food trucks.

Now that the huge crowds have cleared out, it’s time to do some caching/sightseeing! First stop was the Aurora Bridge. They’re always great to photograph.

A really awesome geocache. You had to find the combination to be able to get into it and sign the log. Throughout the night we were impressed at how much time and thought were put into these caches.

We also found the troll that lives under the bridge. There was also a new type of “test” cache they released. It’s called Lab Caches. You go to the area and find a secret geocaching code or phrase somewhere… And you type in the phrase/code on the website to log it. Interesting idea, but not sure if it’ll catch on.

Random awesome artwork we found! Love it!

Thank you Groundspeak for hosting such an awesome party and all the time/effort put into setting up the caches, venue, etc etc. Will definitely try to be back next year! And hopefully I’ll be there earlier next time.

Kinsol Trestle

The Kinsol Trestle has been on my radar for quite some time. It was built in 1920. Located near Shawnigan Lake, BC. And apparently the website says it’s the highest and largest surviving timber trestle in Canada and reportedly one of the four largest wooden structures in the world.

Not too long ago (maybe a few years?) the trestle got fixed up so it’s now 100% safe and people can walk over this incredible structure. Sooo Rhiannon and I decided to check out the place (we’ve both never been here before) and picked up a couple of geocaches on the way too. It was a great day!

The next picture is taken with a technique called HDR (High Dynamic Range)

In the next picture, you can see a gas pipeline going across the river. So crazy!

Geocaching at East Sooke Park

Wow it’s almost 2 months since my last post. I guess things got a bit hectic with work (finishing up my contract), looking for work, and dealing with other things in life. That’s just the way it is sometimes.

Well, the weather has been amazing this week, and I’m hoping it’ll stay like this forever! Matty and I took advantage of this by going out to East Sooke Park to do some geocaching. Recently there has been a geocaching event which resulted in A LOT of new caches at this park. Soooo we decided to tackle some. We found a total of 19 caches and we explored an area of the park which I’ve never been before so that’s always exciting!! Found some cool things along the way too!

Oh, and have I mentioned how beautiful the west coast is?

Day 13 – 15 of Europe 2012 Trip: Geocaching in Newent & Gloucester

For a while, Pete and I have been talking about doing this crazy geocache where it involves a kayak (or some floatation device) and going down a long dark tunnel. I guess today was the day to do it! We met up with his folks in a little town called Newent. We walked around a bit and picked up a few caches.

We got near the cache site, and we had to wait for Pete’s buddy to meet us here. So once he arrived, Pete’s folks took off to do other things, and off we went to the cache site (cache is called “Hippos Below”).

I still love the countryside! Soooo nice!

After getting everything/everyone through a barbwire fence and down a steep hill, we were finally at the entrance of Hippos Below!

Time to get this thing inflated!

Mark (was that his name? I can’t remember) and I went first, but after a little ways in, we didn’t feel 100% safe. The kayak thinger seemed to sag a bit, so we decided to turn around just to be on the safe side of things. Long story short, we were reading the air gauge wrong, so the whole thing wasn’t inflated enough. Afterwards, Pete and Shannon went. It was about a 40 minute round trip.

After they came back, it was our turn to go! Headlamps were on, and off we went! It was definitely weird going down a dark tunnel on a kayak. We had no sense of reference as to where we were or how far we’ve gone. We eventually hit a dead end, then decided to turn around… I guess we floated past the cache by a little! We were distracted by all the calcification on the walls. We turned around and luckily we spotted the cache! Were we ever relieved. After signing the logbook and taking a few pictures, we headed back to the light at the end of the tunnel.

Next adventure was just checking out a local park near Pete’s place, Barnwood Park. We did a Whereigo geocache which gave us a tour around the park. Super interesting! Here are our discoveries.

Operation GeoTriad

Ok, so instead of splitting this up into a 3 part blog, let’s just have one huge post! There’s not going to be as many updates because Summer is over. So I apologize in advance. But here’s hoping my adventures will continue!

Sept 30 – Me, Pete, and the 2 Shannons decided to hit up Seattle and Portland for the weekend because we wanted to do the GeoTriad, and the fact that Pete has never been to the westcoast of the States. Every time Pete visits from the UK, the four of us get together and make an epic geocaching adventure. This time, we thought we’d go for the gold. The GeoTriad consists of three stops – Groundspeak HQ (Seattle), first geocache location (just outside of Portland), and Mission 9 of the Project Ape series (East of Seattle at Snoqualmie Tunnel). Sooo here we go!

DAY 1:

Friday morning. We all meet up at Shannon’s place, and off we go! First stop, Groundspeak HQ in Seattle. We got Pete through the border with no problems (phew!), and by the afternoon, we were downtown. We were a few minutes early for Groundspeak HQ, so we decided to grab a cache or two. We parked my the Aurora Bridge and started our adventure.

Groundspeak HQ! It was awesome to finally check out this place. First out of three of the Triad!! We Met some fellow cachers and the people who work there were super nice. They even have a TV screen showing the logs that people have recently logged. It updates every 30 seconds.

Box of swag!

Signing the logbook after we took some pretty ridiculous photobooth pictures.

After picking up some TB’s and GeoCoins, we were ready to do some more geocaching! We found this awesome troll guarding the bridge.

Next stop, the Space Needle.

View from the top of the Space Needle. Just in time for the sunset.

Panoramic shot from the top. Click on it to view high res.

Once we got back to the bottom, we continued on with our caching adventure. We were heading over to our next cache, and then realize there was a huge group of cyclists gathered around a really sweet fountain. There were cyclists going around the found which was really cool. People were sitting at the bench where the cache was, so we had to just hang around until the crowd left.

Not sure what this place was, but the lighting and stuff looked really sweet.

It was getting late, so we decided to call it quits on the caching. We then drove to a pizza place called Juliano’s to get some pizza. We didn’t know what to expect because obviously it was new to us. We found this place on the interwebs as my friend Shannon can’t eat any gluten, and this place offered gluten free pizza. So it was worth a shot. You pretty much build your own pizza with your choice of sauces, cheese, and toppings. I had a calzone while the others ordered pizza. I must say it was the best pizza I’ve ever had. I said it SO many times on the trip that I can’t eat regular pizza anymore because this place just raised my standards.

Happy happy happy!

DAY 2:

Woke up at 8:00am. Checked out of our hotel at 9:00am. Went to Trader Joe’s for some stocking up on food, then off to the second destination of the Triad, the original cache location just outside of Portland!

We arrived in the early afternoon. We found the plaque where the original stash was. SO COOL!!

We are such nerds…

After a few hours of hiking around the area, we decided to check into our hotel in Portland and explore a bit. The place we stayed was so awesome! We drove downtown afterwards and parked at a parkade. Once we got out, who did we see?

Jimi Hendrix!! That’s who!

Anyways… Let’s continue our caching adventure! We went all over the place. We even played at an old school video arcade place where it only costs 25 cents a play! It’s like I’m reliving the 90’s all over again! We also checked out Chinatown.

One of my favourite things about Seattle and Portland was all the art that’s around the city. There’s so many cool things around the place that it’s great for photographers.

After walking around for quite some time, we all got hungry. So… It was time to test out restaurant #2 we found on the internet – Deschutes Brewery and Pub. We waited about 45 minutes for a table because the place was packed! But we were glad to be finally in.

The problem with going to new restaurants is, you end up staring at the menu for 5 – 10 minutes not knowing what to get. Our server came and I made up my mind… Until he said that there was a $15 special on beef ribs. So I HAD to go for it along with a pint of Mirror Pond pale ale. Oh my goodness… Everything was SO good!! So far it’s been a pretty amazing trip with lots of amazing food and amazing friends and amazing geocaches.

Did I mention that the food was amazing?

DAY 3:

Got up early again, checked out of the hotel, stocked up at Trader Joe’s (again), and off we went to our last destination of the Triad – Snoqualmie Tunnel. This is where Mission #9 of the Project APE is. But apparently sometime stole the cache in the summer, so we didn’t get the original Project APE cache. It’s a tribute cache which is a bummer, but oh well… We’re still going to do it!

Once again, another afternoon start. So far we’re doing pretty good about staying with our “planned” schedule. We weren’t sure how long we’re going to be here for, but here’s hoping we’ll get out of here by dark. We had to hike about 6.5 km. Sooo here we go!

Team Awesome… Assemble!!

Hey, look what we found! A container for a rocket! I think we’re off to a good start in our caching adventure. So awesome!

An hour or two later, we got to the site where the APE cache was. Operation GeoTriad accomplished!! It felt GREAT being able to do this. Afterwards, we awarded ourselves with the GeoTriad coin we all picked up from Groundspeak HQ in Seattle. That sneaky Pete had these coins with him the whole time while the rest of us thought they were in the car. Amazing amazing amazing!

Here’s the GeoNerds at the APE site with our coins.

Oh, here’s the cache.

Once we celebrated and gave each other high-fives, we checked out the Snoqualmie Tunnel. It’s an abandoned train tunnel that’s 3.7km long. It was so awesome because you could just barely see the end of the tunnel on the other side. Unfortunately we didn’t venture that far in there as we were pretty tight on time. We’ll definitely have to come back!

We decided that on the way back we HAD to drop by Juliano’s again to pick up some pizza because it was so epic…. And that’s what we did.

It always sucks having to go back home… Back to reality. But it’s been an awesome trip!

The Journey To Leechtown

Leechtown… It used to be a gold mining town in 1864. People flocked out there, grabbed the gold, and left… Only the remains are left now. This place has been on my radar for quite some time…. And on Saturday (June 4th), it was time to check it out. There was a multi-cache out there, so I gathered a group of people to get that multi-cache along with a few more geocaches on the way there. It said it was a 17km hike round trip… It’s just north of the Sooke Potholes. Sooo here we go!

This was our first cache we were looking for. It was just off the galloping goose trail, and it was John’s (on the right) first official experience to geocaching! And he made the find! Yay!! And Chad is signing the log.

Here’s the view of the river that runs along the galloping goose trail.

After a few hours of walking, we found this sign with some history of Leechtown. It was really cool! We were able to get to the surrounding areas of Leechtown, but the actual town is now protected because it’s soon to be a water supply for the Greater Victoria area…

So the remains that we were able to see were the leftover machinery. It was still pretty cool!

Chad driving the bus

We found the final stage of the multi-cache!

The crew

We started the trip around 10:15am, and ended probably around 3:30pm ish… So not bad at all with all the geocaching in between!

Escape From Victoria

It was my birthday on Saturday, so I decided to have a chill weekend and go to the Mainland to visit a few friends just to keep it low key. I think I’m just too lazy to organize a party… But anyways, I’m sure throughout this week, I’ll be catching up with friends and all that. So I guess it’s gonna be like a birthday week? Sure why not!

So on Friday, I ducked out of work a little early and headed for the ferry.

I’ve always enjoyed ferry rides. It lets me throw on a pair of headphones and just drown in music for an hour and a half. It’s just a good place to chill out and do nothing. It gives me time to think, rest, or do whatever. Yes, I know. I’m weird like that.

My friend Shannon thought it’d be funny to make a “multi-cache”, and the final stage was my birthday present (For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s geocaching. You can check it out right here). So on Friday night once Shannon and Shannon picked me up from the ferry, we had dinner at Wendy’s and then went back to Shannon’s place out in Langley. She made me do the first two stages of this “multi-cache” as they were indoors… Tomorrow, I’ll be tackling the outdoors portion of it.

Saturday – Woke up. Church. Do the rest of the multi-cache. This ended up being a 5 stage multi-cache. The coordinates were a bit off, so it was pretty much a game of hot and cold all around the outside of Shannon’s house. I’m sure everyone had a good laugh about it – watching me wandering around aimlessly trying to find these things. So after being out in the cold for a while, I found them all and it was time to get back inside to warm up and find out where the final stage was. I pieced it together, and played another game of hot and cold only to realize that the final prize was underneath where I slept! Jeez, thanks for that… But anyways, the present ended up being tickets to go see the Vancouver Giants VS Chilliwack Bruins hockey game out at the Prospera Centre in Chilliwack! Fuuun!!

We went geocaching for a bit, then went to the hockey game. It was a good time! Vancouver won 5-1! Yay!

This is what happens when you leave the kids with your camera for a few minutes:

Sunday… More hockey! Shannon’s mom got tickets to go see the Canucks Super Skills at Rogers Arena, so she gave me, Shannon, and Matthew (Shannon’s brother) tickets! It was a good time – The Canucks showing off and having fun! First off we had a round of mascot musical chairs. Marty the Marmot was there (mascot of the Victoria Salmon Kings). It was awesome!

Thanks for the amazing weekend! More to come!

Check out more pics of the Vancouver Giants VS Chilliwack Bruins game and the Vancouver Canucks Super Skills.