Caching with a goal
I stopped the car in my driveway, opened the door, looked down at the pavement and wondered if I could muster the strength up to lift my leg and get out of the car. I made my way to the front door, went inside, took off my shoes, then headed towards my bed where I didn’t move much from for the next hour or so. Although I was exhausted, tired, and sore from the day’s activities, I was happy to be home, and glad to have had a great day caching.
Saturday morning me and Rev Slippery left Moncton and headed towards Fredericton for the big launch of their city’s geocaching challenge. 30 new caches had been released in cooperation with the city of Fredericton, and Saturday was the launch. If you did all 30 caches, you received a specially minted geocoin for the city of Fredericton. Our plan was to get them all and snag our coin.
We made it to the breakfast a little late but managed to get what we needed to start our day of caching. We teamed up with Zemartelo and LadyTagAlong and decided to get most of the downtown ones on foot. We went from cache to cache, signing logs and applying stickers to our caching passport. We ran into many other cachers that were working on the challenge as well. Once we completed the downtown ones, we set out for Kilarney Lake and worked our way back.
The downtown ones were pretty much park and grabs while many of the ones on the North end were more of a hike. One cache in particular was an offset cache which we found ourselves descending down this rather steep embankment. We got the find but the climb back up the hill was a bit rough. A few spots we went to were a bit harder to find a parking spot or know where to go in, but between the four of us, we did pretty good. Several of the puzzle caches had us wandering around the university campuses which was also quite interesting.
By the end of the day, we had snagged a total of 30 finds and had enough to claim the coin and other rewards at O’Dell Park. We didn’t get a chance to record the podcast there as we had hoped, but we still had a fantastic time.
It’s days like this where the idea of caching with a goal in mind truly helps motivate you to go beyond what you might normally do. We really wanted to get them all in one day because it might be awhile before we get back to Fredericton. Despite missing the bulk of the final event, knowing that we accomplished what we set out to do was very satisfying. My body may not agree with it right now, but it was worth it.
Words really do not do justice to thank coopsquared (Daryl Cooper), the city of Fredericton, and anyone else who was involved in this project. At first, I was a bit skeptical of the number of caches for this challenge, but I got to see so much of Fredericton that I didn’t know about, and had such a great time that day that I cannot imagine this tour having been organized better.
If you have the opportunity to go to Fredericton and do this tour, please do it. You will not regret it. If you plan to do it all in one day, be sure you start early and be prepared to some walking along some great trails. Once again, thanks to all involved, and I hope that this raises the bar on city based geocaching tours and challenges.
The list of caches for this challenge can be found here and more information about the tour can be found here.
You only got 30 caches ? We took the mountain bikes and got 52 between Fredericton and Oromocto on Saturday. Between the wind blowing and not being near as young as we thought, sore and tired is the best way to describe the feeling when we were done. Next weekend I have to be in Fredericton again for a meeting and hope to get as many of this tour as possible.
I got 38 but we only cached from 11am to 7pm and we drove by many other caches that we not part of the series. I would guess that 10 or so of the FGT caches were at least 500 meters one way and up hill both ways. I had fun and enjoyed myself. I wish that I had taken the time to explore some of the places we went but we went too fast. At least we went to Fredericton and spent our money which is the goal of the City….lol
Cakecacher73 and I got all 30 as well!! Great day for it and yes there were quite a few hikes but the view from the Old Springhill Road Vista is always worth it !!
Well done to Coopsquared, the organizers and the other volunteers that placed all of the caches. Now the job continues to keep the caches stocked with stickers !!
Although the Springhill Road Vista was a great spot, the cache location was not; the massive amounts of hawthorne bushes guarding the cache at the original location (25m away) had me speaking in a higher tone afterwards.
This was one cache that could have had a better description about how to get to it, we drove around wasting time near the water tower and the other side before we read in another cache description about going up through the field but the view was great.
I think that there should be parking coords added to some of the pages, especially for those people coming from out of town. People from Fredericton (who may have gotten the other 2 caches up there) probably know where to park already.
Disappointed we didn’t get a chance to chat, or do the podcast, but glad I got to see you guys.
Did the tour with KD cachers who I still perfer to call Shepody .
We got the 30 caches and a few others that we passed along the way.
I had a great time – A very well planed event.
Thanks to the Fredericton Crew.
Thanks for the write up, Zor! It would have been nice to talk with you for the podcast in the evening, but no worries. I’ll be adding some parking coordinates for a couple of the caches (like the Old Springhill Road Vista), but for some of them, there are so many ways to access the cache that I really don’t want to include parking locations. I do think, however, that I might include a copy of the trail maps for the city, so you can see where the trail crosses the roads, and parking spots for the trail.
This whole experience has been a lot of fun, as well as a lot of work. But, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right! I’m glad that everybody has enjoyed it so much. Makes all that hard work worth it!
Congrats to Coop and the city of Fredericton for a great series.
I truly had a great day in the company of Zor and Rev Slippery.
Were it not for them me and the Lady probably would have not finished the series so thank you guys for the extra push that made us complete it.
I thoroughly enjoyed the day & meeting fellow cachers on the trail. Once I got out of the downtown core it was pretty quiet! By the way, I did 16 by pedal power including 3 across the river! Think green or team up so as to save on carbon emissions. My goal was to get 20 in the time I allotted myself & that I did. Now to get the other 10 before the snow flies! Thanks to Coops, the Mayor & Council and Staff of Fredericton for making this possible. Got my wooden nickel, Path Tag (very nice) and very orange toque w/the wavy M!!
I’ve been following this post and enjoyed reading about everyone’s experiences on launch day but didn’t really want to respond myself until we had completed the challenge ourselves. We weren’t able to attend the launch or cache at all that weekend so have done the 30 challenge caches in bits and spurts on odds days since, finally grabbing the last one yesterday. We weren’t in any hurry as we knew there were plenty of coins left so took our time and really enjoyed seeing all the places we were taken to.
Our two favorites were the Springhill Rd one with the amazing views and the one at Killarney Lake. We live very near the lake and walk the trails in the park there often. We’ve always loved the walk around the lake so enjoyed having another cache to find while getting a bit of exercise.
We visited a few spots we’d never been to before and discovered some new trails to bike. We had fun finding some of them with Ken and Wanda of Team-Newfie-Trio and put a lot of kilometers on our boots.
I have to echo the congrats to coopsquared, the city and everyone else who helped in this massive undertaking. It was well organized, well thought out and implemented and achieved the goal of getting cachers, local and otherwise, into the city and out on the trails. Job very well done!