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NewsPa's Caching Tales

Caching on PEI

MA and I go caching on PEI a couple of times a year, in the Spring and Fall. We watch the weather and head over for a few days. It makes for an inexpensive caching mini holiday

We get to travel the backroads, visit the beaches, the trails, the parks, the woodlots, etc. We get off season rates for accomodations and there are no tourists. At the end of a long day of caching, we get a nice hotel with a pool, hot tub and breakfast at a fantastic rate. For example we were over there for 3 days in October and 4 days in November. The weather and scenery were fantastic during our caching days and at night we had the pool and hot tubs to ourself.

The plan by Island cachers to place 1200 caches on the Confederation Trail had us excited. And now I see that Olewaif has a new series of more than 40 caches called Coastal Ghosts series. It sounds really interesting.

Here is the link to the series.

Click Here

Here is the text from one of the caches #43 Flora T

Coastal Ghosts Series:
I’ve always been intrigued with tales of the sea; when you grow up on Prince Edward Island, it’s impossible not to hear of the exploits , successes and failures of the mariners of the past.. PEI was first visited by Jacques Cartier on July 1st, 1534 , beginning the connection between sailors and this island which continued over the almost five centuries since that day. Trade, warfare, settlement, and exploitation of the natural waters around PEI have brought tens of thousands of vessels to our waters. Some never left.
The North Atlantic is not a mill pond . Storms did and do still roar up the Northumberland Strait and along the Gulf of St Lawrence. In the age of sail the ships were often more or less at the mercy of the wind and it often took them to their doom.
The coast of PEI alternates between rugged sandstone cliffs and low sand-duned beaches. Vessels came to grief against both. The water around the island is shallow with many offshore sandbars and reefs and a great many of the shipwrecks along this coast are a result of running aground on these. Some got off but many were beaten to pieces by storm waves and loss of life was often heavy. No part of PEI’s coast is free from a share of these disasters, large and small. Over 800 documented shipwrecks have occurred off and on these shores.
In this series I take you on a complete circuit of PEI along the various coastal roads and as best I can, to the nearest land point opposite the described wreck for each cache. Access to the caches varies but mostly you can drive fairly close and the caches are available at all times. There are a few which require a beach stroll and these might only be accessible at lower than high tide. I tried to use the many public access roads, of which there are many. Many of these roads are not open in winter. If you do the entire series you’ll log over 1200 Km.s of road tour and see some parts of PEI that not all that many people ever see. I quite deliberately picked and chose my shipwrecks to maximize the breadth of experience for the geocacher. There’s some very beautiful spots
along this tour and I urge you to explore them well.
If you come on a stormy day perhaps you can imagine the day when the named ship for that place was wrecked.; often right on the cliffs or, at most a mile or two off shore, well within sight of the land where they would have been safe. Most of the shipwrecks in this series resulted in some loss of life, often the dreaded phrase “all hands lost” was used in the reports. A moment of thought about those perished people might be appropriate as you visit the site of their demise.
43 : Flora T . A 52 ton vessel out of Charlottetown foundered ( filled with water and sank ) off this shore on November 1 , 1913. Crew was rescued.

8 thoughts on “Caching on PEI

  • Planning a trip to PEI on the fathers day weekend, always love caching over there, great places with good caches. That series looks awesome will have to make sure Paul puts a few of those on the “route”. With the large series coming out PEI will become a major caching destination in Atlantic Canada for sure. I like the fact the series, like the Dobson Trail, will be hike/bike only (no ATVs) with lots of cross roads to break it up for both long or short hikes, doesn’t get any better than that!!

    • I am SO looking forward to our raid this year. Definitely going to be a hell of a time.

  • The weather was great so we went over to PEI on Sunday and didnt come back till Thursday. We took our bikes and did a ton of caches on the Confederation Trail. WE also met up with Jim on the Sunday to do the entire Premier puzzle series by Olewaif. We bumped into Pikpik ond Tiger tracker doing the same series.

    As usual the caching was great on PEI. We did biking, hiking, park and grabs, puzzles and challenge caches. We even bumped into firefly and mamacat, two island cachers.

    Highly recommended as a caching destination.

  • My brother Spidey and I did a day of caching on the island and it was great. We didn’t find that many since we did a lot of driving and were on a tight schedule… But GC2V4W2 (Victoria Park Resurrected) was particularly fun, and we found one in Crapaud that had not been found in over a year, probably because it was surrounded by a thick layer of thorn bushes and thick evergreens!

    Looking forward to going back some day and doing part of the CT on bikes.

  • Here is the latest info about the CT provided by Olewaif.

    It is nice to see that the entire trail will be done. Ma and I are hoping to go and do some out on the west side past Summerside, as soon as the weather network predicts a few consecutive days of sunny weather. You dont have to wear orange on PEI, as far as I know.

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    The two large spur lines in Eastern PEI 1) Mount Stewart to Cardigan and 2 ) Iona to Wood Islands have had caches placed on them. A total of 159 new caches will be released on these spurs in November. This finishes project placement and release for this year with a total of 1,177 CT Project caches. It is planned that an additional placement/ release will take place next spring with about 150 – 200 caches finishing the spur lines and this project with close to 1400 total caches.
    So far the reception/ feedback of this unique project has been overwhelmingly positive and those of us who made placed/ wrote-up etc etc these caches are gratified with the response. It’s always nice to know people are paying attention. We hope all who cache the CTCP will strive to keep these caches in play by practicing cache maintenance as needed as they go.
    >/b>

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