London, Paris, Berlin.. Detroit

My Wife needed some time away from the farm during her reading week, so I took her on a trip of South Ontario. We had originally planned on Something a little warmer, but it wasn't in the budget. I was planning on getting all the geocaches in a particular carribean country for what its worth! Instead we headed as far south as I could afford - Windsor!

Our first stop was in London, but on the way we had one thing planned - The ONLY thing we had planned to do during our entire week - visit a butterfly conservatory in Burlington. It was a neat place, with (you guessed it!) Butterflies and flowers, waterfalls, and various tropical Flora. My wife has this odd fear of Moths, she is quite terrified of them, but wanted to go see the Butterflies because for some reason they don't scare her. I made specific note of the differences between moths and butterflies - a board on display at the time - but it didn't seem to phase her.. She knew very well that they left the whole "Brain-sucking" aspect out of the list of differences.



Butterfly Hatchery

The Puzzle Stone of Doctor Bean

We made our way to London, checked into the hotel, had some dinner, and headed for downtown! My first London Cache!! A Webcam! With the help of swifteroo I was able to get a few decent shots of myself on the streets of downtown London. Day broke, as it typically does, and I had a day full of nothing to do! So begins the saga of the most productive week of geocaching I have ever had. London, Windsor, and Sarnia were the 3 cities we visited. At each one, the wife asked me to leave for the day so she could get some studying done for school. I completely cleaned house, Over 100 finds, and probably over 100 no finds (but I didn't log them). I visited the famed Elephant statue of St. Thomas, and the perverted statue of Sarnia, and even hopped over to Detroit to pick up my badge for "Michigan" caching.




The Elephant of St. Thomas

Canada has its problems. Jane and Finch in Toronto is hard for some people to stomach some days, but it is really nothing compared to Detroit. It is a city with some deeeeeep problems. I went around 6am in hopes of not wakeing the Ghetto. There was one cache that I wanted to do in the downtown core before heading to a more civilized part of the state. The Detroit Salt Mines is an Industrial complex that borders a residental area. Its not the worst part of town, but its certainly not the best. There was not any significant activity in the area, so I figured it was fine to park the car, grab the cache, and skedaddle. Simple enough. I presented myself to the guard at the mine entrance and explained what I was doing (they were aware of the cache, but still kept their hand on their weapon while talking to me). As soon as I was done, I booted out of there, and headed for Belle Island.



Detroit Skyline - as seen from Windsor
As I have no maps of the American side, I had a rough map of my position in relation to the detroit river, and the various lakes in the area. I made my way to where I thought the highway was, and ended up in bad detroit. There was a car burning on the road, and noone around stopping it. Stop-lights be damned, I was getting out of there.



Pier on Belle Island

Belle Island is a nice island park in Detroit, very little activity from what I saw that morning. Scenic fountains, and gardens, a nice waterfront with fishing piers, and statues dotting the surrounding tree lines. This is good Detroit. I cached here until about lunch time then made my way back to the Border. On the way through downtown I heard a gunshot, in what i thought was a burnt out house (which was apparently occupied). Again - I skedaddled. I don't need to rack up any more body finding points to my geocaching record.



Fountain on Belle Island

When I got to the border, the border guard asked why I had gone to detroit - I am on vacation i responded. Laughter ensued. She told me about the 3 or 4 shootings a day that happen in the downtown area that you don't hear about, and how it is never wise to stop your car in the city centre.

Detroit is a beutiful city if you can ignore the violence around you. I have nothing against the place, but I don't think I will be heading back any time soon.

On the way home I tried to do a few caches in Paris, Hamburg, Berlin and Lisbon (just in case anyone asks where I went on vacation), but most of them were not very winter friendly, and under a few feet of snow. I had to give up! It was a nice vacation and the wife came back quite relaxed. She enjoyed it too, despite only seeing me for movies, meals, and shopping trips.

My Final word on this trip is - FLAT. It is very hard to find any kind of challenging terrain in South Ontario. Its like the Praries!

To the Middle of Nowhere and Back Again

I have a new "Most Painful" adventure it seems! Earlier this month what started out as a taunt, turned into a full blown event and days worth of geocaching. A few of my ribs had been broken about a month earlier by a nasty fall, so I had been less then active in recent weeks, so I was quite excited to get a nasty cache like On a Wing and a Prayer" off my list of most wanted.

There were about 20 or so of us that arrived for the early morning start. We wanted to be ready to go at the trailhead by sunrise because it would take quite a while to get out to the middle of nowhere and back again. Everyone seemed to be dressed appropriatly for the nasty weather that was in the air. Winter had greeted us with avengance! Cold bitter air, but at least visability was good.


25km Hike with no roads in sight

About 9 km in I made a stupid decision.. That is why everyone brings me along anyways - for the comic relief! Instead of following the trail that was heading away from the cache, I would take the bush wacking route for the next 2 kilometers or so. It was great, I was making good progress until I hit a lake. I walked around the lake thinking that it would end, but it never seemed to. I saw a spot in the lake where it narrowed to about 10 meters, and decided to risk going out on the ice.


An old mini bus on the way

Well here is the part where I almost die. Ice buckles, and I go in. For a 10 meter gap in a "seasonal" lake, the water was quite deep. Every muscle in my body instantly charlie-horsed and that was some pain for the record books. I managed to grab ahold of a nearby beaver lodge and pull myself to dry-dom, then radioed to my intelligent companions who decided instead to follow the trails. I assured them I was ok - but my shortcut had put me well ahead of them on the race to the cache site.


A Jack Russel needed a break
I eventually found the trail again, and met up with the front runners - a groups of insanely physically-fit military cachers who were keeping quite the pace. They were suprised to see me ahead of them. We got to the gorge and didn't quite know what to do from there. The gorge was far too steep to climb into in the current snowfall conditions. We peered over the gorge and saw the notorious "Bridge of Death" that had been described to us in previous logs, as well as taunts from other cachers who had already done the cache earlier. We made our way to the bridge of death, and radioed back to group that was behind us to follow a certain route that would take them on a far safer route around the gorge. We crossed the bridge, and the military group steamed ahead and started a fire.

By the time we got to the cache site, the fire was such a welcome sight that we all proceeded directly to it, and probably didnt get around to looking for the cache for a good 30 minutes. My clothes were like a suit of steel armour. Completely hardened to the point that I could hit them with my first, and it would hurt my fist. I really enjoyed that fire, we were really good friends..


smoke in the eyes
We found the cache (it was quite easy, just sitting out in the open), and snuffed out the fire. The soles of my boots had melted (from standing pretty much right inside the fire for too long), but I didn't notice it. Right now my focus was on getting out of there in one piece. About halfway back was when my bones could not take any more of the lactic acid running through my veins. I needed to take a sit down break every hour or so to rest my weary hips and legs. There were people far better off then me, and people far worse off then me. I would like to say I was about average, but I think the fall through the ice had sapped my energy a little more then the rest of the group. I was hurting.

Eventually we started to see cabins, and snowmobilers again. Hurrah! Civilization! After about 25 kilometers of hiking, we made it back to the place we started, made sure everyone was accounted for and headed for the pub in Minden. The "Rockcliffe Tavern" is apparently world famous, but like many of the northland pubs - they turn into snowmobile pirate pubs during the winter. Alot of Rowdy men saying ARGHHHH! alot would best describe it. They also did not seem to want to turn on the heat in the place. Despite being outside all day, the place was freezing! It was nice to just sit down though. It wasn't the best pub night, as we were all quite tired, but we had a nice story to tell!