Current at 11/6/2011 (Online waypoint URL) You have already found this cache! Master Index    Nearest Caches Widget's picnic by Sean and Widget (1.5/1.5) N49° 52.483  W97° 14.303 (WGS84) UTM  14U   E 626574  N 5526189 Use waypoint: GC1DFHX Size: Micro    Hidden on 6/22/2008 In Manitoba, Canada Difficulty:     Terrain:                         Nice walking cache in assiniboine park. thought to be a nice place for a cache. micro container will need a writing instrument. to sign the log.

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5/2/2009 by Kabuthunk
At long last, find number 500 has been... found ! I wanted to make this particular milestone a cache by Sean and Widget, since hanging out with them at the gatherings has always been fun. You guys are really friendly, collect chainmail balls (of which a micromail ball is now inside THIS cache... which if I'm not mistaken should be spiraling the opposite way of the one you had at the event), and thus I wanted your cache to be number 500 .

Selecting which cache was originally going to be a bit difficult however. I had actually planned on hitting up a whole pile of Widget-caches up in the NorthWest corner of the city. I even figured out the coordinates to the Widget Puzzle (really good puzzle by the way... had me stumped for a bit), and was somewhat planning on making THAT one number 500. However... with so many other vaguely-new caches around Assinaboine Park, I just wanted to go on a rampage of cache-finding around here today. Hence, I had to actively avoid finding THIS cache... which has been on my watchlist ever since that DNF, and has been calling my name every day after work, tempting me to go after it before going home... until I had found up to 499.

After some caching in the park (and driving off to grab The Ghillie Cache further North, just because I was wiping so many things off my DNF watchlist today), I had finally lined up Widget's picnic to be find number 500.

But still, it was hard to will myself to make this number 500. For between find number 499 and Widget's picnic was another two caches that I had to specifically NOT look for. In fact, I ended up running about 10 feet from one of them . I specifically avoided looking at the GPS for most of the walk to this cache, to avoid the temptation to just 'get the others on the way'. I rationalized it by looking for them on the way back to the car .

So after passing by various sources of geocaching temptation, I was once again drawn to the temptation of THIS dinifra. Although, on the way, I saw arguably the most idiotic way to play soccer. Some family was eating at one of the fire pits, and one of the kids decided to go ACROSS the road and kick a ball back and forth... ACROSS THE ROAD... to eachother. I mean seriously... why did the parents not stop them?!? Bah... whatever.

Anyway, my mind zeroed in right on where I had thought the cache was when I went there in winter. Dipping my hand inside the once-frozen spot, I found... nothing! Strange... I guess I was wrong from the get-go. I circled around towards the front where I did most of my searching in winter, and what's this... a container? Sitting on the ground? Out in the open? In the middle of nowhere? Picking it up, I opened up this container to find a scroll of paper. Indeed, I had found the cache. And I'm VERY glad I could find the cache... because if I had to pull another DNF on this because it actually WAS missing, I don't know if I would have been able to ignore the other caches and drive all the way across the city for another Widget cache .

Cache in hand, I signed it up and dropped in a micromail ball (opposite spin from my usual ones). I quickly figured out where the cache container must have rolled out of, since it had been about a foot or so from another possible hiding spot. A hiding spot that I can safely say was 100% inaccessible the first time I went after it .

So... thanks Sean and Widget for giving me my 500th find . Not only was it in a park I love to visit, it was placed by a couple that I find it fun to hang out with, AND I got a successful dinifra to remove this cache from my DNF watchlist . So many levels of win, it almost hurts.

But in a good way .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball

3/15/2009 by Kabuthunk
Ahh, Sunday... what a beautiful day. So beautiful a day was it, that my wife and I decided to go for a walk outdoors. I naturally suggested Assinaboine Park, clearly for the sights and scenery, and most certainly not because there was geocaches hiding in this park that I hadn't yet found .

I tells ya... my wife thinks that when wandering around outside with her, I'll inevitably have a secondary motive of using that opportunity to go geocaching. She has me *COMPLETELY* wrong. Geocaching is my PRIMARY motive... her along is an added bonus .

But anyways... this was in actuality one of the times in which geocaching actually DID step down to becoming a secondary motive! Our primary reason for going to the park was indeed to have a nice walk, get some fresh air, and see what there is to be seen. Evidently, lots of snow is still to be seen . Laura got a few good pictures of various things, but those haven't been uploaded anywhere yet. But yeah... we started off our journey by parking where I always park at the... park; somewhere around that bridge that goes over the river. We quickly discovered that the warm weather made for a lot of large, open puddles here and there. Luckly, once we got onto the path through the bushes, it was nice not-very-slippery snow, and no puddles to speak of. And added bonus... no mosquitoes at this time of year for walking through the trees .

Being as geocaching had stepped down to become a mere secondary motive, there was only one geocache nearby... this one (obviously). There ARE several more on the other side of the Zoo, but I figured we probably wouldn't get that far since the breeze got kinda chilly, and kept slowly getting chillier. Once we were pretty much beside the coordinates (or as close as the tree path gets to it), I quickly hopped over (the hills, and through the woods, to grandmothers cache we go...) the snow and began pondering a potential hiding spot. It's a micro, so that leaves a few options. And actually, upon looking closer, there wasn't all that many options to choose from to begin with .

After a minute or so of jamming my hands where Laura was a bit worried I was jamming them without checking for wildlife (man, if she only saw a GLIMPSE of what I do for other geocaches... don't tell her ), I pulled out my palm pilot and checked Cachemate for any hints or descriptions, to make sure I've got the right idea. Turns out I indeed seemed to have the right idea, but was turning up empty. There was two possible options that I could locate near the coordinates... both of which I could find nothing . However, there's still a hefty layer of natural armour in and amongst the hiding spots I was checking (ie: icy blocks of unbreakable coldness), so it could well be that the cache was merely trapped in a semi-clear prison.

I'll return once a bit more of the ice has melted to take another shot at it. The two spots I was poking around felt pretty empty though... although the smaller of the two still had a lot of ice left to melt. The bigger one... not so much.

I'll be back! In a month or two. Unless it's located sooner by someone else, at which point expect me within several days of that .

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