August 23 we headed north to the Olds / Sundre area. Our primary objective was to join the parents’ work bee to prepare Camp Sweet for the arrival of the Calgary Science School student campers but the almost 2 dozen geocaches stashed in Olds beckoned as well.
Turning north off the 1A onto route 766 we weren’t sure what to expect in terms of road conditions so we were pleasantly surprised to find a wide, smooth, recently resurfaced 2-lane highway. We stopped to hunt a few geocaches on the way, including Mountain View, which was hidden on January 20, 2002. Had we known that the primary camo is a HUGE patch of wild raspberries, we would have packed a picking pail! We also enjoyed the Lochend Erratic / History Study earthcache. Unfortunately, highway 766 deteriorated as we traveled north; the section just south of highway 27 was really narrow, full of potholes and in desperate need of resurfacing.
It was almost 11 o’clock by the time we dropped Mr. GeoK and oldest GeoKid at Camp Sweet. It was a hive of activity – mowing, chopping, sweeping, shoveling cow paddies, putting up tents and more and the two of them quickly joined the work effort while Mrs. GeoK and youngest GeoKid headed east to Olds.
Our first target was Emergency Detour #5 – Outskirts. Youngest GeoKid was reading a good book, so Mrs. GeoK started out searching on her own. After checking all the most likely spots (without success) she managed to persuade youngest GeoKid to join the hunt. Fifteen minutes later Mrs. GeoK was ready to concede defeat and take a DNF but as she turned to head back to the cache-mobile she spotted the elusive micro in the most unlikely of hiding spots!
A short while later, on the corner of a couple of residential streets, she took the requisite photo to log GeoKs’ 100th brass cap found for Brass Cap Cache, one of our all-time favourite virtual caches. We had hoped that #100 would be a mountaintop survey marker, but it was still very satisfying to put a check mark next to one of our geocaching objectives for 2008!!
We managed to squeeze in 10 finds in Olds by 2:30, at which time we figured we’d better head back to Camp Sweet. Good thing we headed west then, as Mr. GeoK and oldest GeoKids had been waiting for us to pick them up for quite some time. The camp looked great, ready and waiting for the grade 7s to arrive starting Monday.
Thanks to everyone who hides geocaches in Olds, especially PerryQuad (who placed half our finds in Olds).