Colouring in my map..

I decided that I would go to Ottawa for a few days to enjoy the company of friends, try and get one friend out of a really discusting situation, and try and get caches from all the eastern ontario counties. I am convinced that this adventure will not wow people to my adventures as other articles have, and I feel as though the reason is that there will be no pictures! The reason? My camera is still on one of the barrier islands in Cornwall. Uhgg..

Day one involved mostly driving and picking up a bunch of pre-selected caches along my route. I visited the Peterbourough lift locks, and the Holleford Meteor Impact Crater, and a few other interesting places along the way. I ended up hoping across the border into New york state, as it was kind of on the way! It was the first time I have known the pleasure of explaining to a border guard how I want to go into his country and look for hidden containers. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had a huge knife sitting on the front seat which I am quite glad they didnt question me about. I got into Ottawa and got apprised of the current "trouble" situation of my friend (which I am not going to delve into this time! Sorry!) , and ended up late at bridgets without the pizza that I promised. The pizza eventually got there, but an 11pm dinner time is a real bummer. Sorry!



Day 2 I drove along the ottawa river and into quebec picking up caches along the way. In Cornwall I was out on one of the barrier islands and, as stated earlier, lost my camera. It is in the section between the trail and the survay marker on the barrier island, somewhere amongst the 7 foot grass. I ended up running for my life after a rainstorm swooped in, leaving me as the tallest thing around for kilometers. I made it out alive, but *sniff* my camera is still out there somewhere! Shortly afterwards I was called back to Ottawa to deal with "the situation" again.

Day 3 started off in the Gatineau Mountains. I did a few long distance mountain caches and headed back for the appartment. Then I taught a friend how to geocache on the ones I just did. We did about 4km of mountain running in an hour, and then ran into a huge black bear on the way home. It decided to turn tail before we did, but MAN that thing was HUGE. A local quebec geocacher was also offering a reward for the return of his spiffy high-tech walking stick. I took the challenge, and found that too. The reward should be in the mail! Later that evening we met up with some Ottawa area geocachers for dinner in the Byward Market at a place called the blue cactus. I remember this place being considerably less expensive!



Day 4 started off with my trying to close up the situation, or cutting my strings and bailing, depending on how you look at it. I left it in quite a mess, but it is probably in a better place then it would be had I not shown up. Then met some friends for a vietnamese lunch on the way out of town. Ride home was uneventful, but hey! look at my spiffy counties cached list!