Getting ready for the Gold Country

Geochallenge of the Month (May)

Finished the Geochallenge of the month the first day of the month by getting a cache called "Tunnel of Love--NOT"

The challenge was to find a cache older than the day you started caching. I started caching Sept. 8th, 2008 so had to look for an older cache than that.  Luckily there are still several around older than the day I started. This one worked out nicely as we were heading that way for a caching day already. 

Sneaking past Smallville

Caching a couple of weekends ago, and grabbed some cool caches, in cool places.

 

  You may recognize these pics as one of the locations if you are a fan of the TV series "Smallville" which is based on the DC Comics superhero Superman!! This location is in the Aldergrove area. It is the "Kent Farm."

We did an Adventure Lab called "Hollywood North" awhile back that also took us to this location, as well as others in the area.

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From Wikipedia: The series was produced at BB Studios in Burnaby, British Columbia. Although production was initially planned for Australia, Vancouver had more of a "Middle America landscape". The city provided a site for the Kent farm, doubled for Metropolis, provided a cheaper shooting location and was in the Los Angeles time zone. Smallville's Main Street is a combination of two locations in the town of Merritt and Cloverdale.

Cloverdale welcome sign

Vancouver Technical School doubled as the exterior for Smallville High, since the school had the "mid-American largess" wanted by the filmmakers and was in keeping with Millar's idea that Smallville should be the epitome of "Smalltown, USA". Templeton Secondary School was used for Smallville High's interior. During season one, the production team repainted most of Templeton in Smallville High's red and yellow and distributed large Smallville High Crows logos; so much of the school was painted that it adopted red and yellow as its school colors. The students became accustomed to the film crew (which had to shoot when school was in session), and when a class was dismissed the crew stepped aside so the students could move the equipment to get to their lockers for the next class.

The Kent farm is a working farm in Aldergrove. Owned by the Anderlinis, the crew painted their home yellow for the show. Exterior shots of Luthor Mansion were filmed at Hatley Castle in Victoria. The interiors were filmed at Shannon Mews in Vancouver, also the set for the Dark Angel pilot and the film Along Came a Spider. Clova Cinema, in Cloverdale was used for exteriors of the Talon, Smallville's coffeehouse.

June Geochallenge

The June Geochallenge was another easy one. You need to find a terrain 1 cache. With that being said, there is actually not a lot of those around. A true Terrain 1 means you should be able to grab the cache from a wheelchair in the seated position. Most T1 caches I have found are either on the ground, or in a tree up higher. While true you could ride up to them in a wheelchair, they are a bit harder to reach. I have even found some T1 caches that you had to leave the trail?? Hmmmm....I assume the cache owner is not quite familiar with the Terrain and Difficulty levels. Speaking of Terrain and Difficulty levels, as you can see by the pic below, I only have one more D/T to fill in on my Fizzy Grid!!

I have been caching for about 12 1/2 years now. I have never been worried about the numbers or filling this grid. But I usually go after cool caches in cool locations. Looking for the correct cache to get this last spot filled in!!

Challenge caches

I love working on Challenge caches, which are usually puzzle caches that you have to do certain things to be able to sign the cache and log it. 

Did a couple of challenge caches on the weekend of May 14-16th, a new one called "I'm An Islander! Challenge" got published, and it was out on Shady Island, which is where we were planning to go on the weekend already. You needed to have one cache in each of the 7 regional districts out on Vancouver Island. I qualified already as I had lived over there for at least 12 years, and started caching there for about 4 or 5 years before moving to the mainland. 

The other one was called "BIG Country Challenge" which you needed to have found at least 50 caches that are labeled on the website as Large from the time you started caching. A quick look at my stats and in 12 1/2 years of caching and finding over 5600 caches I only had 48. lol. I searched out some large caches and by the end of the weekend I found 2 other large caches, so I was able to find the challenge cache. Yay!!! 

I also finished working on the one I talked about last month called "MCW-10 mcwilli adds a Little Flair" which I needed to find a full month of Non-Traditional caches. At the beginning of May, I needed to find six caches on different dates, and the last date I needed a Non-Traditional cache was May 27th. The second last cache I went and got to help complete this was a puzzle cache called "Life is a Highway" and the puzzle was to figure out the highway that runs thru 7 different city's or towns. Because of the amount of traveling to do shows I have done, I only had to google one. I knew the others immediately, as I had either done shows there or had passed by several times, so I was able to make short work of the puzzle. 

PS: On the right hand side of this webpage is where you can find my YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, links. Please feel free to check them out and follow or subscribe!!!

2021 Souvenir's 

So far in 2021 I have received 11 souvenir's. Since we are only into the 5th month of the year that just seems like a lot as in 2020 I only got 16 of them. Plus groundspeak is giving, in my opinion way too much time to earn them. One of the 2 souvenir's that I received a few Sundays ago was for "Blue Switch Day" which I talked about in last months "Blog" 

That one is a yearly souvenir, and usually you only have a day or 2 to earn it, as it's usually as simple as go find one cache and you will earn it. This year they are giving you from May 2nd(The day GPS was given to the public) until the end of the year. That's SEVEN months to claim one virtual souvenir.  Whaaaaat??? Seven months to get ONE cache???? I mean YES we are in the middle of a pandemic and people are being asked to stay home, but 7 months is way to easy to earn something like that.

I have been playing the game like it should be played by going for the virtual gift quickly and in a timely manner. Anyway, just thought I would share my thoughts on that with you. Let me know what you think in the comments. lol

AbbyPD Caches

Last year the Abbotsford Police department placed out several caches and there was prizes for finding them. This year they are doing the same. I had an unscheduled day off, so I took advantage of that and headed out there. I grabbed all six and headed to the Police dept. for my prize!!

NOTE: The highlighted or underlined words in my blog can be clicked on as they are links to other cool stuff!! Also if you click on any of the pictures they become bigger to view better!!!

FVCB4 Wrap Up

So on Sunday June 6th was the wrap up event for the Fraser Valley Cache Bash. It was online as in person events are still not allowed. My puzzle cache "Unexplainable Magic Clock" won an award for best Puzzle!! How cool is that!!

Was out in Walnut Grove area for a show, and grabbed a cool cache with lots of Faves. Not going to say the name of it, so as not to spoil it. But it was just a film tube taped to the end of a stick (see pic)

The stick was leaning against a tree, no big deal!!

Oh did I mention the stick was 16 feet long. See picture below.

Gold Country Caching

So, I have been talking about this for the past several blog's and several months, but, we finally have a date to head to the Gold Country!!! YAY!!! We will be heading out on June 24th until the 26th. The plan started several months ago with a list of about 95 caches, but we had to postpone our trip as the weather became bad, and we would not have been able to get as far as we wanted to.

Then our trip list of caches grew to about 130 caches as we planned a different date in May. Then BC was hit with some travel restrictions, so it was postponed again. Arrrrgggg!! Now I have at least 150 caches in the lists(I have broken up the list into several smaller lists so they go on the map better)

Fingers crossed, that the trip does not get cancelled again!! How many caches will we get???

I will write more about this in my next blog. Until then, Stay Safe, Wear your Mask, and Wash your Hands!!

Well that's it for this month,

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65