June Caching….Cachetacular!!

Seeing the article on caching dry spells and the amount of my recent caching activity have inspired me to write about my month – not that my tales compare to Pa’s, but hey, we all have to start somewhere!

The past two winters have been poor caching periods for me with family and work commitments taking precedent. This past spring was also slow, but for an entirely different reason as I contracted bacterial meningitis and nearly died. Definitely an eye-opener.

After being hospitalized at the end of March,my recovery has been fast, although at times frustrating. It was hard to know how much I could push myself or when I would feel “better” – whatever that means. The first real test and my first real caching time for months came at the Fundy event, where our family has gone all three years. It meant a weekend of17 km or so of hiking, some of it fairly strenuous. I was pretty nervous about it, but also excited. I knew that if I could do those hikes, I was well on the road to recovery. I also knew that I had to get back into caching more often – some of my closest friends are people I’ve met through this game and it’s something that I really feel makes my life better.

Funday came and went and was a smashing success. Not only did I have no problem with the hikes, but for the second year in a row, the entire family did all five caches as well – it’s a tradition we hope to continue!

After the success of Fundy, I decided to make June a cache filled month to celebrate summer, the end of school, but most importantly, my health.

The first big event was the Red Dirt Dash III – our first geocaching event was the second dash back in 2006 so we felt we would enjoy it. Although the weather didn’t really cooperate (it poured!!) we still managed to find 41 caches on the day, as well as show off our fancy home made team shirts (each of us wearing one of the four gc.com colours).

The second major cache haul was when RevSlippery, Zonker and I tackled Zor’s storyteller series. We started early in the day with a plan and when all was said and done I had snagged 127 caches – a new personal best for me. Not bad for 13 hours! We even stopped to do a multi cache, fix a few caches and get mauled by massive hawthorns at seemingly every turn – all while laughing our heads off.

The next weekend Ron568, Zor and I spent two days caching inPEI. For those of you that have never gone there – it’s a must. We  snagged over 90 caches on our first day and were then graciously given a place to stay for the night by ElNimrod and rootie – the island’s cache king and queen for sure! Day two saw a fair bit of rain as we headed to Summerside, which meant cutting the day a little short, but still saw us grab over 60 caches again, bringing the trip total to over 150.

In between these trips, I’d been picking off puzzle after puzzle in Moncton (thanks Ma and Pa!) trying to turn those question marks into smilies on my google map.  Still quite a few left to do, but not as many as there had been at the start of June!

To cap off the month, I spent yesterday caching with two different people. In the morning, I cached Scoudouc with Zonker and in the afternoon I cached Shediac with Ron568. The pace of the day was pretty relaxed but somehow when all was  said and done I had snagged another 38 caches bringing June’s total to 377 – almost half of the total caches I had found in all of 2009. 

I think I’m on the road to recovery….