Current at 11/6/2011 (Online waypoint URL) You have already found this cache! Master Index    Nearest Caches Highland Hideout by Celes & Naryn Davar, Trent Schumann (1.5/3) (Unavailable) N50° 38.750  W99° 56.500 (WGS84) UTM  14U   E 433422  N 5610864 Use waypoint: GC36ED Size: Regular    Hidden on 1/7/2005 In Manitoba, Canada Difficulty:     Terrain:                         NOTE: This cache has been temporarily removed for maintenance, and moving to a new location a slight distance away, necessitating new coordinates. This will be done, once the snow has gone. A mixed area of habitation and bush, and not that hard to get to. It may be slightly wet in three seasons. In winter, you do have to walk a few hundred metres through snow. We live close to a national park, and we have all manner of wonderful, curious, and investigative wildlife in four seasons. Our cache has been located on the ground, and every few months, it seems to get hit by a curious coyote or a black bear. They punctured the original ice cream pails a couple of times, and happily distributed the various contents all over the place. The new container (replaced by a thoughtful Manitoba cacher) is on the ground for now, and has had a number of different geocachers find it. In the container, we have added a few very highly desirable items (September 2006): A few paper Canada flags to wave at a patriotic event. Two (20 copies of Scenic Secrets of Manitoba (yes..the book - brand new copies) 5 laminated copies of a card - 10 Tips for helping to reduce global warming A portable thermometer (to hang on your coat zipper) Crest - to sew on Magnifying glass (portable) Happy Caching! Good luck! Rhythms Master

Additional Hints Hints

7/19/2008 by Kabuthunk
Fourth cache of the day! I'm not entirely sure why this cache is showing a 'needs maintenance' on it, since the total of log types on this cache show 78 found, 5 DNF, 3 notes, and 1 SBA. And if that 'needs maintenance' is back from the SBA, that was back in August 2003, so I think it's safe to assume that it's fine by now.

In fact... no need to assume. The cache contents seemed to be in perfectly good condition when I was here. And boy, was it an adventure to get here.

I parked the car with my wife a few hundred meters up the road from that house there. Given there appeared to be people outside, and I couldn't guarantee to myself that they actually owned it, I felt it best to take a roundabout way of getting to the cache.

A funny thing about this cache however... we originally parked on the road perpendicular to the house-based road, but I ended up turning back from that spot since it was fairly boggy, and I figured there might be a drier method to get to it.

Yeah, no .

So after having parked several hundred meters down the house-based road, I galloped through the tall grass (literally, a sorta gallop that I do that's a combination of running and leaping to avoid being slowed down by tall grass or underbrush) and found myself at the forest's edge. It was all fine and good for the next 50 or so meters towards the coordinates. And then it started getting boggy. Realizing that the entire area was a bog, I figured I'd be having a nice, boggy time no matter WHAT direction, so I kept going. Trying to pick and choose my steps to sink as little as possible, it took me about 10 minutes to give that up entirely and just slog through everything that was there.

Thank GOD I had the foresight to wear my sandals. My normal shoes would have been drenched . Had to roll up my pants though. Pretty sure there was a healthy dose of poison ivy in there as well... but a random fact about me... I for some reason seem basically immune to poison ivy. And poison oak or poison sumac for that matter. Stinging nettle (which I thankfully didn't find) seems to be the only plant in Manitoba that I've found that affects me. But anyway... I tromped through the bog, circling around trying to find the coordinates. At one point, the tree cover had my GPS's accuracy so all over the place, that no matter where I went it seemed I was always 20 meters away from the coordinates. I ended up spiraling around a bit, at one point finding myself knee-deep in bog-water, before I eventually located the cache container. WOOH! If there's one thing I enjoy... it's a forest cache that puts up a fight. Not a micro-in-a-forest type fight (I hate those fights), but a "better be well rested before attempting THIS cache" type fight. And man, was this cache definitely a definition of that.

It of course didn't have to be even 1/4 as messy as I managed to make it for myself. In typical fashion, I found a path leading from the cache container that was mostly dry. It never fails... you always find the "proper" way to the cache after you've already reached it by some other god-forsaken method .

Unfortunately, since I already had two TBs on me, I didn't grab any of the ones currently in here.

Nonetheless... thanks for the awesome, awesome bog-cache . I love this type. So much fun did I have (despite almost falling off a long and just barely saving myself from doing a back-splash into foot-deep bog water), that this cache got one of my special titanium chainmail balls as the signature item .

Thanks again! Hope to see more like this .

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and limited edition titanium chainmail ball

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A thick spruce hideaway where it is possible to see Great Gray Owls and Red-Tailed Hawks, the occassional lynx, and white-tailed deer. This is clay-coloured sparrow country, where Blue Giant Hyssop and gaillardia grow wild.