I went out geocaching with Dennis late tonight. We checked out the Woodside Cache in Kitchener. It starts out in a park, surrounded by trees where you have to get dates from a few plaques and add them up together to find the coordinates for the first micro-cache.

But the park is surrounding an old residence of the late Mackenzie King and the house itself is now a museum of sorts and there were many signs warning it was protected by ADT security systems. Not wanting to risk it, Dennis and I parked far away and walked back, entering the park through a side entrance that was much more cool and creepy.

The last number we had to find and add was on a park bench plaque by a lily pond behind the house. Quite peaceful in there, except for the mosquitoes.

Once we had all the numbers we figured out the coordinates and headed to the first micro-cache. You know how some times trees grow such that they naturally develop a split in their trunk? Well, we found this tree that was hollow with one of those naturally occurring splits in it and looking in, we could see some type of cord hanging in it. Reaching inside, I found the cord was connected to a small metal container the size of my thumb - the micro-cache! Inside was simply a plastic piece with the coordinates of the next micro-cache.

As we got close to the next cache’s coordinates, we found a rather large fallen tree and figured it was in and around that. Eventually, I spotted it. Around the back of the tree (which actually turned out to be two trees which had fallen together) was a flat area in which someone had screwed a metal plate into and then attached the cache (which looked like a plastic pack of cigarettes) to that plate using magnets. Inside the cache was a cord attached to a metal piece with the engraved coordinates to the final cache. Quite elaborate.

I should stop to mention the good and bad aspects of the forest we were romping through on this journey. I mentioned earlier that there were mosquitoes, and there were, but there were a lot of them and they never quit harassing us. It was less terrible when we were walking but when we’d stop to look around or stop for a couple minutes at a cache, we would just get swarmed. Not pleasant.

On the plus side, there was a Wonder Bread manufacturing plant right across the street from the forest and about half way through our forest trek, they started making fresh bread which smelled fantastic.

Anyway, finding the final cache wasn’t any trouble at all as it was a more traditional hiding spot (covered in loose pieces of bark, in a tree trunk) and we picked up a starter pack of Magic cards and left the test tubes I grabbed a few caches ago. Talking with Shawn later, he thinks the Magic cards are about 10 years old.

On the drove home, we stopped at McDonald’s and ordered three Quarter Pounders. It was the cheap special for the day, so why not? Except, we must have gotten someone else’s order because we got three Double Quarter Pounders with nothing but cheese.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was full of greasy goodness. Just meat, cheese and bun.

I didn’t mention it yesterday but outside the restaurant where the band played was a bike locked to a lamp post. Except the bike had been customized somewhat into a horse-bike.

No, not like that. You know the plastic or metal horses that are on Merry-Go-Rounds? Well, they had taken one of those and affixed it atop the handlebars. I don’t know if it was merely ornamental or if they let a child ride up there, but it sure looked neat.