The Assiniboine Forest has long been a favourite place to walk, run, cycle, ski, snowshoe and even to go horseback riding. The trails are incredible; the birds and animals love the habitat... pretty amazing for being in the middle of the city! This cache should be a quick drive up and grab... and then go for a walk to enjoy nature in the city! |
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9/5/2010 by Kabuthunk
Man, I'm certainly glad I got to go after this one. Not only is a) Assinaboine Forest an awesome place (what other cities can say they have a forest in the middle of them, anyway?), b) the cache container itself is badass, and c) I got to go for a nice walk with my wife inside said forest. My wife and I had earlier either today or yesterday taken care of pretty much everything that needs taking care of for the weekend, so we had some time to kill. Since it was gorgeous out today, I decided we should get outside and get some fresh air. Since it's been quite a while since I've been to Assinaboine Forest, I figured we'd wander around on the trails in here.
So one quick drive later, we find ourselves in a fairly full parking lot... most likely attributable to the fact that it's a long weekend, so everyone is out enjoying the weather. Hopping out, we do a quick viewing of those information boards at the entrance (my wife has never actually been inside Assinaboine Forest ) and headed on in. I decided to check the GPS to see what caches are nearby, and was quite surprised to see that we had already passed one! In fact, until I zoomed in a lot on the GPS, it looked like I must have stepped right over or under it! However, since we were already passed it, we did a quick walk around on the paved path to see what other caches were nearby, and to show Laura the scenery in general.
However, it appears that I forgot to take something into account. The incredibly vast amounts of rain that we had received in the past week, combined with the particularly warm, sunny weather for the past few days, have made this area a mass mosquito breeding ground. It didn't bother me THAT much since mosquitoes tend to avoid me for some reason, but my wife was being relentlessly attacked. And these aren't little guys, either... I swear this forest grows bigger mosquitoes than I see anywhere else in the city! So we walked over to the end of the paved path and circled back towards the car. My wife simply couldn't stop walking for any period of time without being basically swarmed by mosquitoes. As well, any off-trail walking on my part to go after a geocache looks like it would involve the equivalent of hiking through a water covered bog . Deciding to leave the remainder of the forest for drier days (or failing that, when I'm alone since I tend to walk faster and get bitten less in general, and grew up in the country so could put up with it), we headed back to the car earlier than expected.
However, after returning to the car, I was determined at least to go after this geocache I seemingly passed at the start. I soon discovered that we had parked not far from it, and it only took about 20 seconds to actually reach ground zero from the car. I immediately began the hunt, and surprised myself by being able to find the cache almost instantly. However, I always expect that eventually, there will be a hide similar to this one, so I always check for it. Looks like after hundreds of geocaches, this tactic has finally paid off . Quickly signing the logbook, I replaced the cache as hidden and made my way out. I was a bit perplexed about the area in general... it looks like someone's using the vicinity as an excess crabapple dumping ground. Well, one way or another, the squirrels seemed to be absolutely loving them!
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to get at least one cache at Assinaboine forest today... and an awesome containered one at that .
Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and micromail ball
Additional Hints (There are no hints for this cache)