After a successful scouting trip in February, Mrs. GeoK came up with two multi-caches for Calgary’s inaugural Cache and Release event. After organizing the containers and drafting the cache write-ups, she headed back to Patterson Park on March 3 to hide the final containers and the other materials comprising stage 1 of each cache. After responding to one question from our local cache reviewer she sat back and waited for the caches to be approved and published Thursday evening. Sure enough, about 5:30 we started to receive publication notices for all 37 caches hidden for the event, including Two Treasures – CARCW08 and Patterson Park Viewpoint – CARCW08.
Four of the new caches were "unknowns", so Friday morning while Mrs. GeoK updated GSAK, loaded the GPSrs and updated CacheMate the GeoKids worked on solving the puzzles, with great success! However, due to tae kwon do commitments we weren’t able to get out at the 5:30 pm start time on Friday and by the time we finished with tae kwon do, fixed supper and ate, it was already dark.
So it was about 9 o’clock Saturday morning before we headed out in search of some of the CARCW08 hides. We were back home by about one o’clock after finding 10 new caches (plus 3 other caches that were just too close to a new cache to ignore).
The hunt for Shearzone’s hides was difficult. We parked in the residential area at the top of Edworthy park and started to descend the embankment. But after just a couple minutes we sent the GeoKids back to the car to wait for Mr. and Mrs. GeoK to make the finds. We went down like 10 pins, slipping and sliding on the icy trail, grabbing at the shrubs and trying not to get hurt. Mrs. GeoK ended up with a presumed sprained wrist, although it didn’t start to bother her until about 2:30 in the afternoon. Anyhow, we were eventually successful and found a somewhat better path to take on the way back up.
The event wrap-up party at North Hill Diner was very well attended. Of course One Bad Ant won the prize for the most hides, having placed 15 of the 37 new caches. Thanks OBA! The food was pretty good and the company was excellent. We especially enjoyed our conversations with Tomthemagicman, Sleepy_hollow and Diabolical widow. And we were delighted to win a few draw prizes, coming home with a Landsharkz gift certificate, and some Garmin swag (t-shirt, hat) from GPS Central. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the great prize selection.
Kenny mentioned the possibility of another CAR event this summer. While we’d personally rather wait until early fall, if we’re in town we’ll definitely be participating next time. And meanwhile, we’re looking forward to seeing many of the same folks at next month’s Calgary Area Cachers CITO on April 13.