Current at 11/6/2011 (Online waypoint URL) You have already found this cache! Master Index    Nearest Caches GeoVenture 2011 CITO by MBGA (1.5/1.5) (Archived) N50° 01.375  W96° 54.467 (WGS84) UTM  14U   E 649866  N 5543276 Use waypoint: GC3182J Size: Not chosen    Hidden on 8/28/2011 In Manitoba, Canada Difficulty:     Terrain:   *No attributes specified*     Come earn another smiley at the end of the GeoVenture 2011 weekend by helping clean up our group use area and surrounding parts of Bird's Hill Park! Please gather at the coordinates on Sunday, August 28, at 11:00am to sign the event logbook. Bags will be provided. We will also have some gloves available. Cleanup will start immediately. Everyone is return with their garbage bags for 12:30pm. At that time we will take a group photo and then there will be a draw for prizes.

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8/28/2011 by Kabuthunk
Today made for my second trip out to Bird’s Hill park in as many days. This time I was on my own, had brought my own grabby cleaner thing (of which I’ve still got to get around to making a stronger one… these dollar store ones are so cheap they just about need to be tossed with the garbage after one CITO event), and was prepared to do some CITO.

So this trip around (very far around, since as it turns out I decided to make a quick swing by Grand Beach after the event), when I pulled up I saw several of the familiar faces from yesterday, and was unexpectedly treated to pancakes when I arrived! I completely hadn’t expected that… thanks a lot guys! It worked out kinda nicely, since I hadn’t eaten any breakfast before I showed up, and had forgotten to grab a snack of some sort on the way out the door. All in all, it was pretty awesome to find food at the event when I arrived . So some eating and chatting later, the garbage bags were broken out and the mass cleaning began. This appears to have been my third CITO event ever, so let’s see what kinda of weird stuff I stumble across in my cleanings.

Being a bit of a loner, I decided to wander off on my own. After some general ‘small garbage’ cleanup around the immediate structure, I wandered off into various patches of trees to see what could be found. And all I’ve gotta say is MAN, glass bottles can tend to get heavy after a bit. From seemingly all sorts of time periods, too. The first area I went, I spotted a bottle half-buried in the dirt… no labels or anything, those had long since decomposed, but the glass bottle didn’t look like a ‘normal’ design used today. A little while later, I stumbled across a veritable mother-lode of glass items. Various empty bottles of Crown Royal, wine, some… moonshine-looking bottle that I can’t even guess at what it once contained, and another really old brown bottle that was 3/4 covered, and completely filled with dirt. Aside from much glass, I stumbled across a pair of leather sandals (partially chewed on by animals)… strangely the sandals were about 30 feet away from eachother. I also stumbled across the bones of… some small animal that had obviously met its end in the forest. There was a pile of fur, with various small bones and a spinal column on top of it. Couldn’t identify it, and I left it there since it was clearly ‘natural’, and would eventually find its way back into the ground.

Toward the very end, myself and another geocacher (I apologize, I can’t recall your name) stumbled across several sheets of plywood with a big hole cut in one of them, and a pile of nails sticking out of one side all around the hole. The other cacher spotted it first, and we decided to haul it back with the garbage, both kinda pondering what in the world it could have been used for. There was apparently other evidence of a water balloon… thing that happened here not long ago, so we figured maybe someone had their head in the hole with the nails facing out, so that a balloon would explode and splash water on the person even if they missed. I dunno… it’s a bit of a long shot, but it’s the best explanation we could come up with .

Once the cleanup was as complete as we could get it (except for a block of ice someone tossed out… myself and several others kept confusing it for a chunk of styrofoam and kept looking at it to grab it out of there ), everyone gathered around the spoils of war, and a picture was taken. At that point, the final cleanup of the event’s items began, and very quickly the area started clearing out (after prizes of course... yay camo tape!) I ended up being given a bottle of diet coke to drink in the car, and almost a new tub of margarine had I been going directly home after. All in all, fun times with other geocachers, and cleaning up an area to boot. We need to end more events this way I think.

Took: Lots of garbage to the bins
Left: Logbook entry and chainmail ball