Upcoming trips and Geotours

Avenging a "Didn't Get a Chance to Look Log"

Is that a thing?? Last blog you read about the "Bear that chased us away" we were at a cache called "Our Little Park" when a bear made his way thru, and Oliver and I made a mad dash to the car, and we actually logged the cache as a DNF (Did Not Find) although we didn't even start to look for it.
I went and avenged our close encounter with a bear cache, this weekend.
Here is a pic of me standing where the bear was last week.

This is the bear that had Oliver and I running to the car. I am so glad someone drive by and yelled at us that a bear was coming our way.












Went Caching with Sansue one nice evening, and we found a cool cache while a nearby Raccoon watched over her babies, keeping an eye on us.

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!!!

The baby poked his head out that hole, but I didn't get a pic in time.

Four FTFs

Some new caches popped up close by one rainy Saturday. I decided not to rush out to get them as we were just getting breakfast. Later in the afternoon, I looked at them again and realized they had not been logged yet.....OK.....out the door I go!! When I got to the first one, I met up with StickmanBC who was already looking but had not yet made the find. We searched together and I found it and we shared the FTF. We headed off to the other 2 as they were in the same park, and grabbed them as well. On the way home I swung by another one that had been published earlier also and got my fourth FTF of the day. Soaked but content, I headed home.

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!!!

BC's first cache

I had already found GC1DD Treehugger (BC's First Cache) on July 28th, 2011, but I told Sansue I would take her to it. It's a nice walk up several sets of stairs to where you can view the Ocean from. 

This is the oldest cache location in British Columbia. It's been here since Feb 2001. Because of the original owners having left the hobby, this cache has been adopted by QuigleyJones, formerly dogbreathcanada. It has been found 1669 times, and has 482 Favorite points on it, to date.

I had a show earlier in the day so before meeting up with her and heading up to this cache, I grabbed 11 other caches on my way to meet her. 

Cute little cache box

Little Free Library cache

The Habitat Sculpture

A cool cache

"Sansue with Treehugger"

Next month at the end of August we are going to Alberta, and although I already got "Strathcona Wilderness 1" which is Alberta's first cache and Canada's second ever cache back in July of 2011, I told her I would take her to this historic cache also. (Read more about that in my next blog)

New Geotour

a new geotour had been published in the Aggasiz area, so Sansue and I planned to go out on a sunny Sunday afternoon to do all 10 of them. Once completed and recording the secret code word on each of them, you can submit your answers online and receive a new Geocoin. We had a nice day and found all of them plus another cool cache as well. 

Can you see the cache???

I saw it!!

The Fraser Valley, with the Fraser River flowing fast and full!!

Upcoming Alberta Trip

So I have been planning a trip to Edmonton with Sansue at the end of August, and we have decided to head thru Lake Louise, Banff, Calgary, and then up to Edmonton, and then back thru Jasper on the way home.

Of course I have already been making a list of caches to grab along the way. While looking I noticed a traditional cache called "Balance is the Key" just outside Merritt that had the same name as a puzzle cache in the same place that I got the FTF on back in November 2019, when I went thru on the way to Kamloops for a corporate show. I did a bit of research (Thanx GSAK) and found out the CO (Cache Owner) archived the Puzzle and resubmitted it as a traditional cache as it was a field puzzle and more of a gadget cache, not an online puzzle. The good thing is I will be able to stop by and grab it again on our trip. I also contacted the cacher that found the cache first after it was republished as a traditional ,as his log read (Went after a first to find as no one had logged the find, was disappointed to find it logged several times before it was even published) 

Technically, he and his group were the first to find the cache, since it was a new listing, and the other puzzle cache that I was FTF was archived. I have been in that situation before finding a cache and thinking no one else has visited it yet, and finding signatures of other loggers. Years ago when I lived on the island I would go to Port Alberni for events, and they would give the event goers a list of new caches with coordinates, that had been put out for the event but had not necessarily been published yet. Gold country did this also at an event I was at a few years back.

Kelowna Trip

Oliver (magicboy2012) and I went for a 4 day weekend trip to Kelowna as an early birthday present for him. We had some fun activities planned such as Parasailing, Zip lining, and a visit to the Kangaroo Farm, as well as some caching.

This is the cache called "Balance is the Key" which I talked about up above. We grabbed it since its a new cache and I can log it again. I let Oliver figure out how to get inside the box as I have already done it. (He figured it out on his own with very little help from me). Very strange to do a new cache and open up the logbook and see my name as the first to find, and have to write my name in there again. The CO did not change the logbook, which is why the confusion for the cachers that found this new cache and thought they were the first to find.

"Letter Block Lock cache"

Oliver helping work out the puzzle.

This Gold Country Geotour cache was in the crapper!! Lol

Memory Lane souvenirs 

Groundspeak has 5 more souvenirs up for grabs, which I talked about in last months blog, and all you have to do to earn them, is get out and grab some caches, and you earn points towards each of them. I already got all 5 souvenirs!!  

Well that's it for this month,

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65

Weekend Caching

Weekend Caching

Sansue and I went out to find a few caches in Queen Elizabeth Park. We only found 3 in the park, but it took us a few hours of walking around to find all the info that was needed for a Puzzle cache called "Top of the Park"
We also did a multi cache called "Love Locks" which started off at this cool structure of  4 people with umbrella's all made of iron loops, and people have placed locks on them with their names.
The piece is designed by Vancouver artist Bruce Voyce and celebrates the shelter that love brings and the union that it forms. It will support several thousand locks on the skirts of each couple. Keys can be deposited in a box on site and will eventually be recycled or melted down to become part of another sculpture.Love locks are padlocks that romantic partners have traditionally locked to a bridge, gate, or similar public fixture to show their love. Names or initials are typically inscribed on the padlock, and its key is thrown away to symbolize an unbreakable bond.Many cities are now turning the 100+ year old love locks trend into public art.

Cool structures with lock on them

Some more cool painted rocks we spotted while in the park.

 

So many cool rocks painted in the forests. It's nice to see them, it always puts a smile on my face.

ufkjenkgilguilguil (That's what this little guy is saying. lol)

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!!!

100th Blog Giveaway

The winner of last months 100th Blog swag giveaway was a cacher named Gomphus. I sent him a box full of caching swag with a few unactivated Travel bug tags, 3 unactivated Geocoins, several different pins, a few different cache containers of various sizes, a few of my FTF trading cards, a couple of my Pathtags, some cache labels, a couple of books to stock caches, and a Log roller for those Nano's and Bison tubes, and some other misc. stuff!! Congratulation again Gomphus, I hope you enjoy it all!! Thanx to all the others who replied as well!!

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!!!

Magic and Mystery Cache:

I had my newest cache in place and submitted it for review, and the following morning it went live!! How exciting. Looking forward to many people finding it. It can be found here: "Magic and Mystery Cache" I hope it gets lots of Fave points!! Unfortunately it will not get hit lots as Puzzle caches tend to get ignored and are often searched after less.
Check it out if you are in the area!! Next I am gonna make some multi-caches with a magical twist.

Caching with my boy on Saturday

We are still getting out caching on a regular basis and socially distancing ourselves from others. While many are hitting the beach, Oliver and I enjoy walking the trails and caching.

Cool path with the creek winding thru and under it, and winding like slithering snake.

Not a rock, but a painted seashell

My little guy rocking out!!

This rock is smaller than the other one.

Oh but wait, this one hides a cache!! Spoiler alert

In Balance with Nature!!

Lots of these boxes in the wood, they are Bee nesting boxes. Very Cool!!

We found a total of 6 caches, 4 that were traditional's, 1 Letter box cache in which we actually followed the clue instructions instead of just heading to the coordinates, and a puzzle cache I had solved some time back, and it was laying out in the open, but it was being guarded by a huge slug.

Important Message:
GeoWoodstock XVIII, Canada's largest geocaching event is moving to August 28, 2021.⁠
Visit GeoWoodstock.com to find out more!
Check out the website at "Geowoodstock" for all upcoming info on the event as well as events leading up to it, and make sure you log your "will attend" at "Event" and register online!!
They are going to have some amazing things, including a really cool Magician doing a couple of shows.....Hmmmm, wonder who that could be??? Make sure you get logged in!!!
PLUS: A-Maze-ing News in the form of a GPS MAZE!
They will have a new Canada themed GPS Adventure Maze in the Fraser Valley as part of GeoWoodstock XVIII and the Pacific Northwest Geocaching Celebration!!
Your Registration is a HUGE Support!

Memory Lane

On one of the many Face Book Geocaching groups I am on, someone asked how many caches should you do before hiding one of your own. The answers varied from 50 to 100 finds before hiding one, because then you have an idea of many hides so you don't make any mistakes. And by then you also learn some of the rules to hiding a cache. I have seen people join geocaching and hide a cache immediately thinking they are helping out. But then when no one is able to find it because of bad Coordinates or a crappy hide it just diminishes the hide, and the player feels bad and then may not play anymore. After reading the comments on this, I was curios as to when did I hide my first cache. I checked GSAK (A program for Data base of caches called Geocaching Swiss Army Knife)
The date of my first hide was April 23/2009. I started caching on September 8/2008, and had found 60 caches before hiding my first cache called "Tricks and Treats"
I placed a rather large Tupperware container filled with magic tricks and some small magic booklets into the woods, on a nice well traveled trail. It was found by 221 cachers before I finally archived it as it had gone missing.

New Souvenir series

Speaking of Memory Lane.....Some new souvenir's are available to get for just getting out and caching!! How awesome is that?? There are 5 in total, which I will work on getting all of them.

What are the five souvenirs I can earn?

1. First geocache hidden: 10 points
2. First geocoin: 50 points
3. First Mega-Event: 100 points
4. First million geocaches hidden: 150 points
5. 20 years of geocaching: 200 points

How can I earn points?

So, Oliver and I were out caching one Sunday as it was a beautiful day and we just started looking for a cache and a car drove by and said “there’s a bear coming towards you.”
We ran to our car just as this guy crossed the road and went straight to the spot we were standing moments ago. Oliver was actually standing on the stump you see in front of the Bear!!! Yikes, glad we were warned!!

We decided to not do that cache and moved on down the road to some other ones. lol

 This one was cool that we did (Spoiler)

My boy loves his photo on rocks or stumps. lol

Well that's it for this month,

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65

Hooray 100th BLOG!!!!!

100th BLOG!!!!

Hey all, it's finally here....My 100th blog. Little did I know, that starting a blog on July 18th 2012 would turn into a passion of fun and adventure, and creating a blog every month!! But here we are, 8 years later with 100 Blogs written and published. I must admit, some month's I was unsure of what I would write about, but once I started writing, fresh idea's always came my way. I made a commitment to write something basically every month. I saw many other blogs start strong, and then the writer became bored or busy. Believe me when I say I love being busy, but I always find time to start writing here every chance I get. In fact even some of my blog's, including this one start getting written before the previous blog is published. Some months I don't get out caching much, like back in January when we had that freak snow storm. PS, I live in the Vancouver, BC area and we barely see snow!! I was still able to get a blog out that month!!
A Great Big THANK YOU to all who have enjoyed my blogs and follow me on my adventures!!!

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!!!

Feel free to take this test from the Geocaching Official Blog:

If you are like some, you may have found yourself questioning if this “hobby” of your's is really more than what you are admitting, a geocaching addiction. Maybe you dream about FTF's or see household goods as future TOTT (Tools of the Trade). Trust us, we’re not judging. We’ve put together a list of 15 signs to confirm if your geocaching addiction is real.

1. You plan all your vacations around geocaching. 
2. You see untraditional containers and think they would make a great geocache.
3. You have more than 100 trackables in your collection.
4. You have multiple geocaching Lists and set Geocaching.com as your homepage. 
5. You spend your free time solving puzzles.
6. You own multiple tools of the trade, some which include non traditional items like a kayak, ladder, rope, etc.
7. You can read ROT13 and see the hint without using the decryption key.
8. You have a dedicated bag for all of your geocaching supplies ready to go so you can find  a cache on a moment’s notice.
9. You have a personalized stamp for logbooks.
10. You own a GPS (or even multiple).
11. All your family and friends know about your “hobby”.
12. You’ve made a significant detour just to find another geocache.
13. You have alerts set up for FTF and you have a friendly competition with the other local cachers in your area about who can find it first. 
14. You walk past places or landmarks and your first thoughts are, “This would be a great place for a geocache.”
15. You start introducing yourself by your geocaching username.

I identify with most of these but two, I will let you guess which one's!!!

More Puzzle caching

Been working on some more puzzle caches recently, as you can see by my map list, I have quite a few solved. Now I just have to go grab them soon.

Check out this cool pic I took, while grabbing a cache to complete a challenge cache. (I take a lot of pictures while caching) It looks like an Octopus tree grabbing a log.

It was near a cache I needed to add to help complete the "It's My Birthday - Let's Party! Challenge" cache.
The challenge was to find a cache celebrating it's birthday from 1 to 6 ON THE DAY OF ITS BIRTHDAY.
These must be done in order from 1 to 6.
As you can see my requirements according to Project GC were met to complete the challenge and log the cache:

Magicman65 fulfills challenge It's My Birthday - Lets Party! Challenge (GC2GKDF) according to https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC2GKDF/28742
The requirements have been met!

GC3YWFN - TPT06, hidden 2012-10-17, found 2013-10-17 (age 1 years old)
GC7NW16 - Zeppelin94's Urban Jungle Cache, hidden 2018-04-28, found 2020-04-28 (age 2 years old)
GC74X66 - Oasis in the Heights, hidden 2017-04-30, found 2020-04-30 (age 3 years old)
GC6H1Y8 - Jingle Bell Rock, hidden 2016-05-02, found 2020-05-02 (age 4 years old)
GC5TP9F - new gloucester trail north, hidden 2015-05-02, found 2020-05-02 (age 5 years old)
GC540GN - Sapperton Engineer Series 7: Spock's Home, hidden 2014-05-02, found 2020-05-02 (age 6 years old)

The 1 year old cache, I had found several years ago, but it still is usable for this challenge, as it was found after the challenge cache was published.
The last 5 of the six needed, I found within a weeks time, and the last three for the requirements I got one Saturday morning. The first one that day was about 1 km south of the Challenge Cache, then I headed all the way out to Fort Langley for number 2, then back to Sapperton near New Westminster for the 3rd, and then to the Challenge cache!!! About 110km round trip that day for 4 caches!!



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!!!


Important Message:
GeoWoodstock XVIII, Canada's largest geocaching event is moving to August 28, 2021.⁠
Visit GeoWoodstock.com to find out more!
Check out the website at "Geowoodstock" for all upcoming info on the event as well as events leading up to it, and make sure you log your "will attend" at "Event" and register online!!
They are going to have some amazing things, including a really cool Magician doing a couple of shows.....Hmmmm, wonder who that could be??? Make sure you get logged in!!!
PLUS: A-Maze-ing News in the form of a GPS MAZE!
They will have a new Canada themed GPS Adventure Maze in the Fraser Valley as part of GeoWoodstock XVIII and the Pacific Northwest Geocaching Celebration!! 
A HUGE thank you to the folks who already purchased a Registration level and to those who purchase one by May 17th!  We want to make our 'early adopters' feel special and so we're coming up with cool names and super perks for you! Register by May 17th, to be part of this elite group. 
All event registrations received to date will be honored for the new date and those participants will be bestowed with the title Charter Member of GeoWoodstock XVIII. The event geocoin you receive in your package will be EXCLUSIVE to Charter Members of GWXVIII. 

New cache soon to be posted!!!

I went out and down a trail close to my place today to find a perfect spot to place a cache. It will be a video cache using magic. It will be submitted for review on the day this blog goes live. I will also be able to use this cache for the Geovlogger's May Geochallenge of the month, as the challenge is to do something from home such as build a cache to be placed later or something of that nature. You can check out the Trailer of my Video cache here: "Magic and Mystery Cache"
I will let you know how it goes, in next months blog. 

We have noticed there has been lots of painted rocks on most of the trails I have been on recently. Very cool, that people are doing this. I have a friend who's granddaughter and her are painting rocks to do the same. She has even given some to a friend who is a long haul trucker, and he is dropping them off in every province he visits. Very cool to see this stuff happening, to brighten peoples moods. 

  

Well, stay healthy and safe...see you next month....OH, WAIT, the contest to win the Swag!!!!
You didn't think I was gonna forget, did you?? OK, here is what you need to do to win the box of swag, pictured in last months blog. 
100th Blog Swag Giveaway:
Send me an email to cymagic@shaw.ca with the answers to these questions that can be found in recent blogs:
1. What was the name of my 5000th cache find?
2. How many pathtags do I own? 
3. When did I find the "Original Stash Tribute Plaque" (Exact date)
The first email I receive with the correct answers will get the box of swag mailed to them!! Good Luck!!

Well that's it for this month,

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65