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!