Saturday morning we headed to Pearce Estate Park to do some maintenance on the geocaches we placed a year ago for release on the day of WWFM III. It turned out that The DHARMA Initiative was in fine shape, but PEP Wetland Interpretive Trails needed a bit of repair work on the camoflage. Once that was taken care of we headed out along the Bow River pathway system in search of some geocaches.
Our first stop was Rock Leaf, a micro in a spruce tree. What made this cache so remarkable was that a deer was sitting under the tree as we approached. It got to its feet once we were within 5 meters or so, but never moved more than 2 or 3 meters from where we first spotted it. I fear it was injured, and hope it recovers OK.
We rode several kilometers before Mr. GeoK crossed a busy street to search for another bison tube while the I stayed with the boys on the nearby pathway. After that, we did our best to figure out the route we should take, but since we’d never been on the pathways in this part of town before, it was somewhat trial and error.
We eventually ended up splitting up, with Mr. GeoK and the boys continuing north while I crossed a bridge over the irrigation canal and went for a 3jaze multi-cache called Brassy View. The views to the west were terrific – the Rockies still have a heavy cap of snow. Since we enjoy a similar view from our kitchen window, my attention was captured by the graffiti near the posted coordinates. I found the required information and did the requisite math before taking a couple of quick photos and then heading off to find the cache container.
Just after I found the cache, my walkie-talkie squawked “Dad, I can’t see you and neither can K. Can you please slow down!?!” It was our GeoKids, feeling alone on the bike path. I called back to them, but they later told me all they heard was static.
Eventually, after pushing my bike through a 5 foot tall underpass below Deerfoot Trail (that was a strange experience – 8 lanes of traffic rumbling overhead), I caught up with the rest of the family. In the meantime, Mr. GeoK had nabbed 3 caches, including In Plain Sight, his favourite cache today.
After hauling some bikes and kids across the irrigation canal we managed to get back onto the main pathway system, find one more geocache and then return to our car. We were on the trails for about 2 hours, rode just under 20 km and found seven geocaches. We’re hoping to get in several more similar half-day outings this spring.