GEOCACHING FRENZY

My brother in law John and I were geocaching every day for the past week and hauled in quite a number.  Two of the days saw us drive down past Sayward to spend time searching out caches. The first day was about twelve hours but the second was over fifteen hours arriving home just before midnight.  We drove about 375 kms each day.  We also did many trails in this area so my numbers grew quite a bit during the past week and a half.  Things will slow down now as John and Anne have gone off to a fifty year high school reunion and we are leaving here Monday morning.
We had a visit from my Aunt Nancy and Cousin Chris yesterday and and had a visit from Cousin Donna and Ken the other night.  We are getting together with Nancy, Chris, Donna and spouses on Sunday for supper.  This is turning out to be a pretty fast two weeks.
I was talking to the couple parked right across from us this morning and they saw a cougar walk down the walkway less than twenty feet from their motor home last night just before we got home shortly after nine.  The Marten whose photo is below was sitting very near where the cougar had walked down the path.

Remember to click on the photo to enlarge

The sacrifices one has to make to get a geocache.  This cache was on an island in the swamp and not having the option of waiting until summer and the water to dry up, I shed my boots, socks and jeans and went for it.

iPhone photos by BIL John.  I'm consulting my GPS trying to figure out where the cache is hidden.

On another caching day, Mitzy accompanied us and got too tired to walk the rest of the way so we put her in my backpack

These are iPhone photos too.  The rest below are from my Canon SX50

One day John and Anne took us out to their friend Jerry's property at Quatsino which is an inlet coming in from the west coast of Vancouver Island.  His aunt homesteaded this property many years ago.

A little cabin at Jerry's 

While I was looking for a geocache, I spotted this Merganser floating past me on the river.  Photography trumps geocaching so if I spot something of interest, forget the cache, fire up the camera!

Aileen and Anne spotted several of these Pinesaps on their morning walk and marked the area for me to find later

Some interesting rock formations down the beach from where we are parked

As the tide recedes, these mini rivulets are left behind in the sand.  I thought this looked like an angel with her wings above her head

With a different perspective, her womanly shape and toes are visible

This is the rootwad of a tree on the beach.  This is what the tree sits on when it is in the ground but of course the roots are mostly broken off now.

Barnacles and Mussels on a rock down on the beach

While we were sitting in the motor home this morning, BIL John spotted this Marten.  I shot this through the front windshield.

And just to make Maggie jealous, here's a shot of Aileen and Bryony, John and Anne's Border Collie/Australian Shepherd cross.