For the last little while, I’ve been listening to podcasts, even though I don’t have an iPod or similar MP3 player. A podcast is sort of like a radio show, except it’s downloaded off the Internet using something like iPodder rather than listened to on a radio. (Just to confuse things, some radio broadcasters create podcasts.) Since I don’t have an iPod (or similar MP3 player), I burn them onto CDs and listen to them while I drive.

Anyways, the one I’ve been listening to the most is called PodCacher. It’s a geocaching-related podcast created by Sonny and Sandy, a pair of geocachers who live in southern California. They chat back and forth about a number of geocaching topics each podcast and occasionally even have special guests. They have various instrumental tracks that they play behind each segment of their podcasts which are original compositions by Sonny.

If you geocache and haven’t listened to it yet, check out their website at www.podcacher.com. If you do listen to them and enjoy their podcast, donate some money to help offset their expenses using the PayPal link on their website.

Kathy and I went to Toronto this past weekend for my cousin’s birthday and my uncle’s birthday. We stayed at my favourite Toronto hotel, the Westin Harbourcastle from Thursday night through Sunday afternoon.

Friday morning, we were treated to fly-bys by several heritage aircraft who were presumably flying in support of Memorial Day celebrations in Toronto. Kathy and I went shopping Friday afternoon. This included a trip to MEC and walking almost the whole of the Eaton Centre. In the end, we bought a gift certificate and a small backpack (for geocaching) at MEC and a couple of birthday cards at the Eaton Centre.

Saturday, my Dad and I went geocaching while my Mom and Kathy went shopping. The weather was great and our caching activites took us out to the Toronto Islands where we found a couple of caches, one at the eastern end of Ward’s Island (GCFE01) and the other on Algonquin Island (GCKNWM). I hadn’t been out to the Islands in years, possibly since I worked for Canadian Tire Petroleum’s head office in the early 1990’s.

Sunday started with a swim in the pool followed by brunch at Toula’s on the very top of the south tower of the hotel. After packing, we headed back to Ottawa. The major excitement on the trip was a deer in the ditch looking intently across the road like he wanted to be on the other side. This occured on the 416 a few kilometres north of our last deer encounter. Fortunately, the deer ran away from the road when I honked the horn rather than across it.

Kathy and I took part in the Go And Get ‘Em 7 geocaching event in Ottawa Friday night and Saturday. We did four caches Friday night and then checked up on our cache (GCQXR7) before calling it a night. Saturday, we did another six caches and then met up with everyone else at a local restaurant.

The weather was damp, ranging from light drizzle to torrential downpour. Friday night, we ended up doing some urban off-roading to get to one of the caches. Who’d have thought one could go bouncing along muddy tracks like you’d find in the middle of a forest in the urban part of Ottawa?

Pictures are available here.

On my way home from Toronto on Sunday, I did a number of geocaches at rest stops on the 401. One of those caches was my 100th find. Since my first find in April 2004, I have gone geocaching in three provinces, four states and three countries. I’ve also done a webcam cache, logged a benchmark in Key West and attended a 24-hour geocaching event in Ottawa. About a dozen travel bugs have gotten rides from me and I’ve released three of my own, one of which has since gone AWOL. 🙁

Another of my travel bugs has visited exotic places such as BC, Costa Rica, the Netherlands and France and has logged almost 20000km in the process.

In terms of caches hidden, I assumed ownership of one cache and placed two others. A third and possibly a fourth are in the works.

Geocaching has allowed me to see places I would not otherwise have seen. In particular, the series of virtual caches through Glacier National Park in Montana led me and my parents to some amazing locations.

What other activity could get someone out at 2am to go slithering down muddy slopes in the woods with a small flashlight in search of a Tupperware container containing trinkets you could probably find in your local dollar store?

Kathy and I checked up on the cache we placed south of Richmond (GCP93C) on Saturday and then headed off to do a couple of nearby caches. One of the caches was a multi that is apparently 11km from start to finish. The forest access road we needed to use is closed to motorized vehicles until the 15th of September, so we headed on to another nearby one, also in the Marlborough Forest. This time, the forest access road was just a “use at your own risk”, so we chased a bunch of mountain bikers along until we found the trailhead about a kilometre into the forest.

The cache was called Inukshuk’s Treasure (GCB9FF) and it was guarded by a small inukshuk the owner had built. We found the inukshuk quickly enough and didn’t spend too long looking for the cache container. We took some pictures with the inukshuk and then headed back to my Tracker.

On our way to the next cache, we took a short cut that ultimately ended at a point where we decided to turn back because the road disappeared into the trees — literally. Naturally, we could see the back of a sign about a hundred metres away, but there was no way we could get through without seriously scratching the paint.
So, we backtracked and made our way to the second cache, Road Forgotten – Beckwith (GCMDWE). We drove along an old road that was the old boundary between Beckwith and Montague townships and found the cache about 100 metres away from where we parked (in the middle of the forest, of course).

All in all, we had a lot of fun doing the two caches, and getting a lot of mud on the Tracker.

Donald the Sun Worshipper, one of my travelbugs, is on the move again! Since I released him in early November 2004, he has visted caches in Ontario, British Columbia, spent much of the winter in Costa Rica before moving on to the Netherlands and now France.

So, Kathy and I went to Miami Beach for a week’s vacation involving sun, sand and surf.

We managed to get in the ocean every day of the trip, even with the other things we did which included driving through the Everglades, taking an airboat tour of the Everglades which included seeing alligators (!), touring Miami Beach, scuba diving (me) and snorkelling (her) at Key Largo, and driving to Key West at the very end of the Florida Keys. We even had time to do a little geocaching.

Oh yes, I got to hold an alligator!

I’m in the progress of uploading pictures from the trip to my photo album. I’ll add a link when they’re ready. 🙂