The Garden Plains Cache Log by MajBach

Apr. 25

O.K., I'm at home now. Despite being an easy cache, I had one heck of a, er call it an experience, finding this cache.

A couple nights before, I knew I would be in Barrie and Orillia the next day or two on business, so I scanned the area for caches and made a printout to take with me. This particular cache was kind of out the way, so I didn’t include it. On the first night, I stayed at my brother-in-law’s place and logged a cache on his computer I found earlier that day. While on the PC, I again looked around and somehow paid more attention to this cache. I then realized it had a coin in it – which I really wanted to check out – so I wrote down the ID of cache on the back of one of my printouts and also the coordinates for where to park, or so that is what I would recall thinking the next time I read it. The next day, I brought it up on my GPS by referencing its ID and started driving. It took almost an hour to get there and three or four times along the way, my GPSr really acted funny. It would suddenly skew my present location and give me real wacko speed-readings. A simple power on/off seemed to correct the problem.

I ended up guessing wrong as to where to turn off the highway near L. Simcoe and found myself on some very dusty and windy back roads. Eventually, I approached the cache (as indicated by my GPSr) and noticed it was about half a kilometer directly north of the road in a bush that was fenced off at the road. Adhering to a strict ‘no fence hopping rule’, I drove up a bit and found a place to turn off the road and examine the situation more closely. I parked beside a big sign with a lot of birds and a description to the area. I figured I was in the right place but I had to find an entrance yet. Well, now I go to my sheet that had the ID and co-ords for parking for this cache (just a note, the cache ID I wrote down was at the top of the blank page and the co-ords for parking were at the bottom. It looked like two pieces of info for separate caches, but that’s just my sloppy handwriting I figure)d. So, I punch in the co-ords for parking and make them my destination. The GPSr said I was 51.7 kms away! What the heck? ‘Oh no, this is not the cache with the Geocoin in it! That one is in Barrie!’, I exclaimed to myself. Just to be sure, I doubled checked my coordinate conversion – yep, these are the right numbers. Then I cycled the GPSr power just to make certain I wasn’t saying I was someplace I wasn’t like it often had earlier today. Sure enough, distance to parking was still 50+ kms away. But wait a sec, now it shows I’m only 3 meters away from the cache I was currently hunting! I guess when I was up the road a bit, the GPSr was showing a skewed position again and I was indeed NOW at the correct spot for THIS cache. I hurriedly took a look around the area, but because of the sign, I quickly assumed this was virtual cache. So, I hopped back in the car and started south to get to the Geocoin cache south of Barrie. Shortly after passing the Kirkfield lift lock (first time I’ve seen it from land, as I will explain in a bit), I verified the ID number for the cache with the coin in it – I knew I had that right – and searched again for it on the waypoint list on my GPSr. I quickly noticed that there were two very similarly named caches on the list and I must have just visited the wrong one. When I entered the new ID, it immediately showed it to be 6 kms behind me! I had to stop the car to figure this out.

Turns out I had picked the correct cache the first time. The other coordinates were indeed for parking, but for a different cache with a similar name. Hence my reason for writing them on a different spot on the page.
The fact that when I drove by THIS cache the first time and the GPS indicated it was in the middle of the bush must have lead me to believe THIS was the cache with the specified parking. A detail I overlooked after cycling the GPS and getting a proper readout.

By this time, I have a self induced paranoia that I’m in some kind of race to find this Geocoin, simply because of all the wild goose chases I’ve just put myself through. So I raced back to the cache, all of 5 minutes to get there and started removing all the rocks looking for the cache. As I did this, I shook my head in self-embarrassment as I remembered reading the night before about how this cache (‘the one with the coin’) was one in which you could drive right up to. I quickly gave up on the rock hiding place and started scouring the other few remaining places in the immediate area to hide a cache.
*Sigh*, there it was. And there too, was the coin.

This was a nice cache and an even nicer area. I’m a bit of a birdwatcher myself but I didn’t see anything but a killdeer here. I guess that’s a little unique considering the time of year.
I cannot remember precisely what I took or left. I do remember forgetting my bag of ‘cache stashes’ at home and looking for something useful in the car worth leaving. Grabbed a small vacuum sealed pack of (tasty) flavored ground coffee and also left a Timmy’s coupon for a donut or muffin. Took the coin – of course.

My drive home was a little more relaxed than the drive there. I avoided those dusty roads for starters and took the highway paralleling the Trent. This was also a trip down memory lane for me. Late last year, my wife and I brought our new boat up here and took a long-weekend trip up the Trent. We launched at the nearest marina just east of Lake Simcoe and traveled to Pigeon Lake before returning home. Shortly after pulling the boat from the water and beginning our trip home, we were involved in a near fatal accident. We had just pulled onto Hwy 12 from Hwy 48 (the road most will probably take to this cache). Traffic was very busy but moving fast. We were travelling about 90 kms and I looked up in front of us and saw a hub cap in flight just hovering vertically a few inches above the asphalt. I pointed it out to my wife because it looked kind of comical, despite the fact it was travelling right at us at about 150 km/h. It then immediately dawned on me (from several years of towing trailers) that this is often a sign of a wheel about to come off a seized bearing. Sure enough, I looked over to the left at the oncoming truck and trailer and his tire and rim came off. I immediately reacted to avoid the hurtling rim/tire combination that was only perhaps three car lengths directly in front of us in our lane. It struck us in about the center of our lane, but we were almost completely off the road by now. Surprisingly, the force of my swerving the car did not cause me to lose control, even though it was abrupt enough to shear two of the four bolts mounting our 400 lb. outboard motor to the boat. From the time I first noticed the hub cap, to the time we were actually stopped couldn't' have been more than 5 – 6 seconds. The guy that lost the wheel continued without stopping up to the lights at the intersection we just came from. Not only did no one stop and inform him (he had multiple axles and mat not have even known – but I doubt it – the reaction of the oncoming cars should have clued him in), but no one stopped to see if we were okay either. Maybe they could see how infuriated I was. It took the cops over 90 minutes to arrive – they dispatched one from Whitby.

I don’t know why I swerved rather than applying the brakes. I think my initial fear was that the tire was headed straight for my wife. As it turned out, this decision literally saved our lives. The tire came off the trailer and hit the road and then bounced back into the air. It struck us in the middle of our lane but because I was already partly off the road, it ‘knicked’ the front driver’s part of our car. Had I slowed down even slightly, the tire/rim probably would have missed the hood on its flight up and went through our windshield. Even though it’s been 9 months, this really sunk in for me today for the first time. BTW, the ‘knick’ cost about $6500 of body and mechanical damage.

Well, this is probably the longest log I ( or anyone) have ever written, but I wanted to share it with you. Hope you found it interesting reading.

The Garden Plains Cache Page at Geocaching.com