Current at 11/6/2011 (Online waypoint URL) You have already found this cache! Master Index    Nearest Caches Niko's First Cache by Niko (1/2) N49° 49.704  W97° 08.765 (WGS84) UTM  14U   E 633333  N 5521200 Use waypoint: GC1E25P Size: Small    Hidden on 7/10/2008 In Manitoba, Canada Difficulty:     Terrain:                           In St-Vital Park. Watch out for muggles as it is close to the main park road. You will have to get off the trail in the bush. It is a medium sized container hand painted by Nikolai (8 years old) and filled by him. I added the FTF prize.

Additional Hints (There are no hints for this cache)

9/12/2008 by Kabuthunk
AHA! I just KNEW I'd tackle you one day or another. Well... that one day was today! I had decided to bike to work, since my wife needed the car for the day. Hey, possibly one of the last few bike-to-workable days of the year... I'm taking advantage of it . I also planned to check on my own cache somewhat nearby, so it was all win-win. Get to bike for the day, check on my own cache, AND give a good dinifra at THIS cache! And the best part is... unlike my first attempt, I won't be on a strict timeline!

So right after work, I hop onto my bike and head towards St. Vital park. It was surprisingly quiet for a warm Friday afternoon. It was about 6:00pm too, so you'd think people would be off work by now. I guess they were home eating or some such. Or people don't go to parks as much these days. Bah... non-outdoorsy-people!

I arrived relatively close to ground zero shortly after 6:00. There were all of a few people walking their dog out in the open area, and a pair sitting on the bench not far from the coordinates. So to avoid looking like a weirdo crashing his bike into the bushes in front of them, I doubled around for a little bit until I could find a relatively more open way to enter the vicinity.

And speaking of more open... is it my imagination, or was that foresty area trimmed in there? For some reason, it seems like there's a lot less long grass and fallen branches and whatnot in there. I'd almost think they're cleaning up or something. Unless it's just my imagination. Or the onset of fall is making some of the foliage die down a bit. I dunno .

But that aside, I layed my bike down on that big fallen tree with all the bark off of it close to ground zero. With my backpack, helmet, gloves, etc still on, I began my hunt.

Now... the thing is, when I can't find a geocache when caching on a bike, the more frustrated I get and longer I look, the more equipment I begin to strip off of myself to make moving around easier. Given I had searched the area a few months back, I stripped my backpack off pretty quickly, since everything both looked so familiar, yet so.... not-containing-a-cache . Also, the backpack was snagging on stuff . Not long after, the helmet came off, followed by the headphones for my mp3 player (since those kept snagging on stuff too). My biking gloves came next, still searching around, circling back and forth. Just as I pulled the second glove off, I spotted where the cache MUST be hidden. Without skipping a beat, I walked right past the area back to my backpack beside my bike. My geocaching bag was in there, you see. After I grabbed a chainmail ball, I walked right back to where I figured was the hiding spot, and whattdya know... bingo .

The annoying part is that I must have walked by that about a dozen times the first time I was here, and about 3 times this time. Because of the trees, my GPS kept bouncing me all over the place, so I was circling about 10 meters in any given direction of the actual ground zero. Thankfully, noone came by or asked what I was up to crashing around in the bushes . After signing up the logbook, I placed everything back and gave it the best natural camouflage I could. The camouflage on it when I got there was really, REALLY good though... it blended right in! Still surprised I wasn't able to locate it a few months ago... but on a timeline, I tend to rush when searching... which is usually a bad thing .

Thanks for the foresty St. Vital Park cache! Glad to see that some more are finding their way into this area. It's a relatively big park, with tons of room for more geocaches .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball

7/31/2008 by Kabuthunk
Unfortunately wasn't able to home in on this one in time. In a desperate attempt to make tonight's 'Revewers Night Out' my 400th cache, I had five to find today, but a full day of work in the middle. I had actually planned on waking up early so that I could find a few before work... but wouldn't you know it, the one day I need to get up early is the one day I sleep in .

So I rush out the door, and end up having only 15 minutes alotted to driving down River Rd, going into St. Vital park, parking, finding the cache, logging it, and working my way back to Bishop Grandin. Naturally, traffic was slow .

To top it off, the city appears to be running a massive sewage-line or whatever that is through the center of the park. Or most likely water drainage... but it's a massive PVC pipe that's going straight through the dead-center of St. Vital Park. MAAAAN... given how long it's taken the city to complete anything else (the bridge over the South Perimeter comes to mind), please don't tell me that pipe will be sitting there for the next three years.

So the pipe forces me to detour around a bit, killing another few minutes. I eventually find parking close to the coordinates and dive into the bushes. Well, not literally since I'm in work clothes, but at least gingerly wade into the bushes . As an added bonus... it started to rain!

Man... Murphy must really hate me today ... him and his damned laws!

I spent about 15 minutes wandering around there (yes, I was late for work ) until eventually giving up. The GPS kept bouncing around, so I was searching for a small container in a ridiculously dense forest. The fact that the GPS kept on pointing me towards a massive pile of broken-down trees/branches didn't exactly make things easier either. Not being able to kneel down to look under stuff (work clothes and all), I searched around as best I could but couldn't turn up a think. It was really more frustrating than anything else... trying to search on a very strict timeline, in clothes that I can't get too dirty, in the rain so that anything I touch will get dirty faster, in a dense forest where I'm touching everything.

So yeah... had to abandon the search. I'll return another day for this one, but looks like it'll be somewhere past 400 finds. At least Murphy forgot to watch me AFTER work... he let me get away with all KINDS of finds .