Go And Get'm 13

February 13-14, 2009

Every now and then, Ottawa hosts a 2 day geocaching event called 'go and get'm' (GAG). People place caches specifically for the event and on the Friday at exactly 6 pm, the caching starts and goes until 6 pm the next day. After all the caching is done, we all join up for dinner and to exchange stories of our 24 hours of caching.

This year was the first time the GAG event was held in the winter. Lots of people were skeptical about the timing but we had perfect weather for the event.

We decided to have the whole family go out (Grandpa included) to do a couple of caches on the Friday night. It was a bizarre sight to see the whole family pull up in the parking lot as it was already getting dark and to head into the woods. The snow was fast and Samantha screamed with delight as she skimmed across the snowy trails. We picked a good trail to start on and managed to get 3 FTFs (First to Finds) before meeting up with another group of geocachers. Once we were done that trail, Rubby and Bryan kept going until it just got too cold to bare... in total they racked up 17 finds, 9 FTFs... not too shabby! (Definitely this Friday the 13th was not unlucky for us!)

The next day we got a late start since the kids had swimming in the morning. Grandma and Grandpa met up with us at the pool and we did a couple of caches together. then the grandparents took the kids and Rubby and I had the first day to ourselves since Christopher was born! We continued to cache and had lots of fun with some of the elaborate set ups at the caches. We got another 22 caches for a total of 39 overall for GAG13.

Christopher tries to get ready to go caching
but the cat doesn't want to give up his warm bed.

Grandpa and Sammy with a FTF.

Sammy is delighted to have found another cache. We were so lucky to have her along since Grandpa and Rubby need a lot of help finding caches.

Sammy discovers an inukshuk in the forest on the way to the cache.

Yikes, this cache is radioactive!

Can you spot where the cache is hidden? An elaborate hide where a piece of bark is magnetically attached to the tree to hide the hole where the cache is hidden.

Anyone call for a multi?
The redirect for the multi cache was on the phone receiver attached to the tree.

This one wasn't tough to find... the challenge was in the retrieval! Rubby was sad that another cacher was already retrieving the cache when we got there.

A sewer entrance... could the cache be down there? ;-)

A beautiful area for a warm winter day walk.

Any idea where the cache is?

In this fake cement block of course!

We stopped for a quick grab in this park and found a local hockey game going on.

It was fun to watch the kids (and their parents!) all excited about the game.

One of the waypoints for a multi had us count the number of dots on this sign...
we miscounted and ended up a little confused.

We happened to see a coyote hunting in the field.
His foot seemed hurt as he was limping about.