The Juan de Fuca Trail and area

On Sat. Sept. 10th, Landchatch and I stared to do most of the caches between Sooke and China Beach Parking site, along the water side. It was a wonderful day both weather wise and in our search of those caches that took us up and down the trails to the beaches.
We started out at 0600 ours in Ladysmith and drove to China Beach via the Island highway. In our quest for the day, we managed to find 35 caches with 4 DNF's. We started at China Beack and cached towards Sooke doing a few caches in Sooke before heading home at 1800 hours. It was a long day and we hike well over 15 km,s.
It is our quest to do all of the Juan de Fuca Trail over the next few months depending the weather.
On Sat. Sept. 17th, we decided to start the trail at China Beach and again left ladysmith at 0600 hours and headed for the parking area via the Sooke way. We arrived just before 0800 hours as we stopped for one cache that we had a DNF on last Sat. and searched until we found it, great way to start off the day. We parked about 350 meters on the road near a bridge past the China Beach parking and it saved us a bit of  hike. The weather was overcast with a lot of fog and rain but still a nice day. As we started out on the trail, 10 woman hikers were coming from hiking the trail and camping. The 11 km hike took us a little over 4 hours to get back to the road and then had to hike back to the truck took over an hour on the road as we only had one truck this time. The hike back to the truck was a little over 7 KM's. We encountered another 8 hikers/campers along the way.
The trails were in good shape and mostly dry and not too many puddles. The views were wonderful but the fog and rain did limit some of the views of the wonderful area we were in. I can see this trail getting a little tough as the rains become more frequent over the winter. We managed to find the nine caches along this portion of the trail, and two of them had DNF's from the last cachers here.
Our quest is to start where we left of in a few weeks and do another section of the trail and hopefully we can get a few more cachers in order to do a longer section.
I will be adding some photos later on to show the area for you.
After our lunch we started for home heading towards Port Renfrew and out to Lake Cowichan caching along the way finding another 7 caches. This brought our total to 17 cache finds for the day and so happy to get some of the trail done. Geocaching My Way of Life  Paulboy

Paulboy & Cougar Kid's Geocaching Adventure Day # 8

This has been a great trip overall, Our adventure has taken us from Calgary to Medcine Hat, down to Montana,  to Lethbridge and back to Calgary for our last day of caching.
Today we did most of the Flames Geo-Art but it was a tough go as a lot of the caches were in need of repairs, many DNF,s and all the caches were little nanos stuck in the ground. One short section we could not drive with our suv. Not what we expected when we got here but not the less we did most of them.
The second section we did was the Dog Pound and it was great series. All the caches were fake rocks with a tube in them and they were all in good shape and dry. We managed to get145 caches today before 1600 hours and heading back to the hotel about an hour away.
In total we travelled over 1000 KM, found about 1300 caches, had two events and got to find/do an amazing cache that was set up for us in Lethbridge. Cougar Kid did all the driving and I did all the runing from the car through the tall grasses avoiding gofer holes. Never did see any rattle snakes and that was a good thing.
This evening we had supper with my good friend, John & Lisa and also my cousin John and his wife Shelley drove from Red Deer to join us.So nice to see everyone.
All that is left is to fly home in a few hours. hope you enjoyed our adventure and thanks for following. Geocahing My Way of Life  Paulboy

Paulboy & Cougar Kid's Geocaching Adventure # Day 7

This is day seven of the adventure and what a ride it has been. We started early this morning and did almost all urban caches in the Lethbridge area. The weather was not as hot as it has been but none the less warm. We even did a few short hikes in parks around town. We managed to find 85 caches in eirht hours.
We had our second travel event at Pizza Hut and ten cachers showed up, even one from medcine Hat.
We are getting ready for the last day doing PQ updates and trying to get the maxium caches we can on our last day. Also having supper with my old friends John & Lisa and my cousin John and his wife Shelley who are coming from Red Deer tomorrow night. So it is a close for this day and will post our last day tomorrow night with a wrap up on Sunday.
My cache find are now at a new level. My goal for the year was 20,000 and today I made the find. Have a great night.

Paulboy & Cougar Kid's Geocachng Adventure Day 6

Well it was time to say goodbye to Medcine Hat and after a breakfast at the hotel, we set our sights for the Canada/USA border to Montana about 0600 hours. We cached along the way finding about 15 roadside caches. We arrived at the border about 1130 hours and had lunch before crossing into more desert. We cached about 5 hours plus driving and managed to find about 125 USA caches. We were driving through more range roads in a 35+ degree weather and it was some hot running back and forth from the car to the fence line. I think I lost another 5 pounds. We saw a few wild animals and not many humans. We had a chat with a few farmers and they were a lot nicer than the physo bitch we ran into a few days ago. At 1700 hours and still well over 1 1/2 hours of driving to get to the hotel, we called it a day and our day is now over. We will cache the city tomorrow and have our event that evening. Off to bed now as a little tired..My finds to date are 19,974, only 26 to go for 20,000.
Geocaching My Way of Life  Paulboy

Paulboy & Cougar Kid's Adventure Day 5

This is day 5 of of 8 and we have now found a total of 995 caches. Today was all city drive ups and a few small drive up side roads  Our total today was 95 caches. The temp was at 40 C at one point so lots of water again today. Some of the caches today were a bit tricky but managed to find most of them. After 5 day in Medicine Hat, most of which was great, it is time to move on to Lethbridge early in the morning caching along the way and going to Montana to grab a hundred caches or so.
We had a great supper tonight and now to clean up, pack and get ready for another great day. I am sure I will have a lot more to write tomorrow as we wiil be in so many different places.
My cache finds are now at 19,839, only 161 from 20,000. I suppose it will be Friday before I get to that number..More to come tomorrow..Geocaching My Way of Life  Paulboy

Paulboy & Cougar Kid's Adventure Day 4

Day four proved to a little differnt than the last three for sure. It all started out great as we finished the last 50 of the Search series in about an hour and then on to complete the Bear Series. It was just after noon when we finished the 150 on that series so we moved to a different area to do the Heart and maple Leaf Series. We stopped at Heart# 30, found the cache and stopped for lunch.
We had been warned about a silver truck and the driver was following cachers around and not happy about any one being on the roads, legal driving roads. Here is my log from the cache.
LOG-( We started off a little late today and off we went to finish off the Search series, last 50, then we went to complete the Bear head series and completed that just after noon. It was rather a nice day and we looked forward to another great day. We drove to start the Maple leaf and Heart series and were parked at https://coord.info/GC5WR5V, when a lady in a silver Dodge stopped and asked if we were picking those things, I said yes. She drove off and then returned 10 minutes later as we had not moved. We were enjoying lunch, she got out of her truck and had a cache in hand screaming and yelling things I can not post here, threatened bodily harm, said she called the police, when we said we would wait for them she went nuts on us, up in our face and after 5 minutes of yelling, screaming and would not listen to reason. She went to her truck yelling we were on private property and roads and she was going to get a few more pissed off farmers and bring them back. Her face was so red and she was vibrating, we thought she was going to stroke out. At this point we made a decision to move on and lose those 150 caches, now that pisses me off. Please be careful if you are caching that way, you may get run off the road or worst. Did I mention that we will cause fires and take food from her family. There are homes for people like that.
We then did a bunch of caches on the main road and in town bit.
All the caches we found were in good shape. The caches in town were great to find and thank you all for the great caches. We have one more day here and plan to make the best of it, I am a bigger person that one phys-co bitch muggle. Thanks for all the caches and the work it takes to place and maintain them.
Over all we got 177 caches today and maybe a few more tonight.
Geocaching My Way of Geocaching, Paulboy)
So off we went for fear of a gang of pissed off cowboys and a pissed off DB. We cached in town until supper time and did our logs for the day.
At the event last night we got asked if we would like to have a shot at doing a sort of night cache and I would never pass up a chance for a good cache. This cache is called Hand Trap" https://coord.info/GC3TBR5" Look this one up and watch the video. We both found it and it was the best cache I have found to date. The CO and BurgessDidz set it all for us. This was so much fun and being on a time limit is like a pressure cooker. Such a great job, great craftsmenship and attention to detail, flashing lights, music. What a great group of cachers we met last night. Well worth the trip here. I am now at 19,750 cache finds. Thanks for reading and more tomorrow of our last day here.
Geocaching My way of Life  Paulboy 

Paulboy & Cougar Kid's Adventure Day 3

This morning was slightly different in that we did not hit the road until closer to 0730 and got our first cache at 0750 hours. Our goal was to complete the Jigsaw Power Trail of 253 caches. The weather was great and it promised to get to 28+ degrees.
It was Cougar kid's birthday today and he keeps telling me he is still young!
As were having breakfast, an older couple ( well they looked older) came into the small eating area and with the usual chit chat that travelers do at motels, began flowing. Then the question two men travelling what to here ":How long have you two been MARRIED". I guess because of Cougar Kid's moustache and my stud like body, I suppose I could see that. After setting them straight, we finished our breaky and hit the road for a day of gay caching.
The roads were long and dusty and the temp was rising. As Cougar Kid drove, I would jump out and run through the ditch to the fence line or post and grab the cache. A lot of the caches were pill bottles that were broken, wet logs and needed maintenance. There was a bit more traffic today but still fairly quite. At least most of the caches were on my side today.
Three deer ran in front of us on the road for a while and then jumped the fence and dissappeared in the rolling feilds. Not long after that, I got out of the car to get the next cache when I realized that the three calfs were not in the fenced fields and had got loose. You guessed it, they were standing at the cache but one hello and off they went down the fence line.
We finished the series by 1400 hours and moved along to the Search Power Trail and did 50 of those caches by 1600 hours. During the caching day we also pcked up a few other type caches along the way. The temp reach 30 at parts of the day, it was so hot on these flat lands. I must admit, we did see a tree!  
Now we drove back to the hotel to clean up and get our GPS ready for Day 4 and headed out for our event, "Cougar Kid's Birthday Event".
It was a new Boston Pizza in town. Eight cachers showed up, T.D.M.22, DSK11, Slapshot, Navy People, BurgressKidz and BoBear. It was great to meet everyone and wish Cougar Kid a happy birthday and got some inside info of the area and several of the cache CO's were there. We are going to do a night cache tomorrow that we found out about.
Out total finds for the day was 316 cache finds. It is time to hit the sach to rest my legs and get some much needed sleep.
This adventure is a great one and more caching will continue. Day three is now at a close and in the morning the start of Day 4 is sure to be another adventure. My number of cache finds are now at 19,572and our total finds for the first three days is 637. More tomorrow and happy dreams.