Celebration for Opus Terra – A great geocaching day

Yesterday was day 9 of our trip to Ottawa.

We went to the event in Sherbrooke area to celebrate the 15000 caches of Opus Terra. The event was at a Scout camp in rural area and we decided to cache on the way.  At our third cache two vehicles pulled up behind us.  Out popped Taz30 and their 11 year old son Wario33 from Riviere du Loup who had come to our Ice Walk this year. In the other car were Ambriere (#2 in Canada) and joce13 (a Victoriaville cacher famous for  his camos). What an incredible surprise. We spent most of the day caching with all of them and attending the event with them. Lots of teasing, stories, fun, and mostly easy finds with this exceptional group.

We had a surprise gift for Wario.  To congratulate him for having done all the caches at the Ice Walk event, we gave him one of the coins from the Fredericton Winter challenge.  On the coin is an ammo coin with the cache number for our Ice Walk event

The event was incredible.  A couple of hundred people in attendance. The celebration was great, with lots of tributes to Denis and Micheline.  Not only are they #1 in Canada, they are also reknown for all their contributions to caching, the help they provide and their participation in the caching community. 

I had written a note prior to the event that we were bringing Bernie the Travelling Cache that Zor had passed to us in Fredericton. It didn’t take long for people to start asking about Bernie and when someone made the big announcement, there was a line-up to sign.  Over 30 cachers signed the log book, including Opus Terra who had missed him on Bernie’s previous trip. WE shouldn’t have been surprised with the interest. The previous day we had been surprised by two cachers at a cache while on our way to Sherbrooke.  They were two of the organizers for the event. When they found out who we were, they asked to sign Bernie right away rather than wait for the event.

All in all, it was a great day of socializing and caching in the area. We met many cachers whose names we had seen often during our previous trips.  We also met some familiar cachers that we had met at previous events, including some Ottawa area events.  We also ran into a few cachers who had done some of our Shediac caches during their trips to the Maritimes.  After the event a number of us drove up the road to a nearby cache where we waited for the Sunnygirls to show up and claim the cache as their 10000th find.  Lots of hugging and pictures.  The cache had been set up as a temporary rural mailbox at the side of the road. The cache was really impressive.

We will be staying in the area and slowly making our way to the event in Quebec City for the Sunnygirls event next weekend.