Letterboxing, Commuting and Chickadees

I took the afternoon off to enjoy a letterboxing excursion to 2 of mmmtika’s letterboxes.  The weather was nice – sunny, dry, not too cold, no wind.

First stop, Holidays Start at Midnight.

Picked up the geocache first. A small logsheet-only cache. It is at the other end of the parking lot and has been there since 2009 so will likely stick around and protect the letterbox – another cache can’t be hidden in the lot i.e. within 161m of the cache.

Had to wait out a woman taking a smoke break in her van. Then a couple of  commuters meeting up in the lot. When the coast was clear I went in for the grab.

Mmmtika asked if she could use the black sock camouflage method. I used this method twice. I got the idea when I found a geocache hidden this way, then re-found it about 3 years later and the sock was doing quite well and blended in even better with age. Also a great way to use up lone knee socks. But it has it’s drawbacks – mostly, it gets wet. It can be icky to pull the box out of a wet sock. One other thing that I learned today – if it gets wet in the winter, it freezes up.

This was a nice little letterbox. Good container. Handmade logbook. Fun hand carved stamp that went with the theme. And the new cool thing about this letterbox was the stamp pocket and how mmmtika incorporated the stamp.

A quick dash over to rehide the box/sock before any other cars arrived and I was off to Ayr for Chickadee, Chickadee.

Drove down Fountain to Dickie Settlement and then the lI remembered. I was also supposed to check on Blair Sheaves. Bumble couldn’t find it when she visited. So down Old Mill I drove and stopped in at the tower. The ramp off of the footbridge has a broken first rung. Not good. This ramp will be especially slippery when it’s wet. I took photos and have reported this to Heritage Cambridge. Hopefully they have the budget and manpower to repair this quickly. Addendum: they got back to me today and will forward it on the appropriate staff so that the rung gets fixed asap.

I was relieved to find the container exactly where I left it. It’s a tough find, especially if you’ve never found a box hidden like this before. The box is in great shape. Bumble, if you’re reading this, it’s hidden somewhat like your stamp-only box at the McMaster building in downtown Hamilton.

After the successful maintenance visit I continued on to the Chickadee box in the FWR Dickson Wilderness Area. I think this is my 3rd visit. I’ve cached here before. (Found one cache today after finding Chickadee.)

Got to the boardwalk and right away a chickadee flew past me and landed on a bush about 2 feet away. Then another arrived. I didn’t bring seeds so I looked around and spotted a few seeds that were left on a boardwalk post. I stretched out my hand. A few seconds later I was one with nature.  So cool.

Then on to the letterbox. I overshot and picked the wrong Y tree. (It turned out the be the more obvious Y tree, that I had ignored.) So I stayed about 30 feet from the trail and walked parallel to it until I spotted the prize. Nice craftmanship. A letterbox that’s built to last. Loved the hand carved stamp and the artsy stamp pocket and the handmade logbook. A job, well done. I left an HH, that I picked up in November at the Lazy Susan box in Williamsburg.

I really enjoyed this caching experience.

Advertisement