Mrs. GeoK and oldest GeoKid flew to Victoria on Friday the 13th. After finding a couple of geocaches in West Sannich we headed west along the TransCanada (yes, it crosses Vancouver Island – in fact "mile 0" is in Victoria) to exit 17 and then on to Sooke. Our mission: to walk the beach in search of fossils to fulfill the requirements for Landsharkz’ "20 Million Year Old Earthcache". This was a great location and we timed our visit for shortly after low tide so we had lots of time to explore the beach, study the fossils and rocks and enjoy the ocean views.
We found a few more caches on the way back to Victoria, where we checked into the Hotel Grand Pacific. A couple were "grandfathered" virtual caches and we especially enjoyed the view from Gordon Beach.
After spending a few hours at the Royal BC Museum we wandered along the inner harbour in search of two more geocaches hidden by TwoCrows: one was another virtual and the other was a regular-sized traditional. Mrs. GeoK made the find on the traditional while oldest GeoKid photographed seaplanes coming in for landings and some of the boat and ship activity in the harbour.
Altogether we managed to log 8 finds, one DNF and a couple of could not computes. We noticed that many caches in Victoria involve multiple projections or conversions to/working in UTMs, which we found a little tough. Hmmm…maybe it’s time to practice these skills and introduce them to the Calgary area!
