Tuesday, October 18, 2011 Lethbridge
7:00 am
The temperature is +1 C, with a high predicted of +16 C. From the Environment Canada website: Today Clear. High 13. Tonight Clear. Low minus 4. Normals Max: 13°C Min: -1°C
7:15 PM Geocaching
The goal for today was to search for geocaches along Highway 3 east of Lethbridge, all the way to Seven Persons, and then work my way back looking for all the caches south of the highway. There are at least 30 some to search for. I hope to make a sizeable dent in this today, and then clear it off the next time.
- GC2WHPJ - Prairie Winds - The Reliance Mine
- GC2VMXY - Prairie Winds - Mighty Modern Machines
- GC2VMXR - Prairie Winds - Purple Springs Cemetery
- GC2XD0V - Prairie Winds - Prairie View Cemetery
- GC2WCQR - Prairie Winds - Ballman School
- GC2YQFB - Prairie Winds - Burdett
- GC2XD0R - Prairie Winds - Pinto MacBean
- GC2YQF4 - Prairie Winds - Whitla
- GC2VMXW - Prairie Winds - Seven Persons Cemetery
- GC2VMXV - Prairie Winds - SMRID KM 292
- GC2C01A - red rock coulee
- GC261K4 - One4-Eh!
- GC2YRYN - Prairie Winds - Manyberries Station
- GC2NWYH - Prairie Winds - A Real Prairie Shindig
- GC2YRVZ - Prairie Winds - Old Jensen School
- GC2YRHN - Prairie Winds - Made for Prairie Winds
- GC2FQFY - ADITC - Etzikom
- GC2NR30 - Prairie Winds - Animal Park
This was my first dawn to dusk geocaching day in a long time. It was very enjoyable, with lots of variety. Obviously, the majority of geocaches were affiliated with the Prairie Winds set of caches that were created as part of a geocaching Mega-Event held in Three Hills, Alberta earlier this summer. The majority of these were regular size containers (e.g. ammo cans) making the actual finds relatively easy. The joy was in reading the detailed historical backgrounds to many of them.
I really fouled up the puzzle cache (Prairie Winds - Burdett) by correctly solving the puzzle but incorrectly entering the coordinates into my GPS. I should have realized the error sooner but I ended up almost 20 km away from the intended destination before I finally admitted I had a problem (my coordinates had me right at a pivot irrigation system - but unfortunately it was in the middle of a farmer's field). I finally corrected the problem but what should have been a 15 minute exercise turned into an hour. The real plus was that I saw many more irrigation systems. Fascinating.
A nice break was provided by the red rock coulee cache. This involved a hike of about 650 metres to the site, all of it in very scenic badlands terrain. This took about an hour to complete the round trip, in part because I was taking so many photos. One needs to be very careful in this type of country (primarily to avoid getting lost, but also because of the likelihood of seeing rattlesnakes). It was relatively easy today as the ground was dry and hard, but even a little rain can turn much of the clay to a quagmire and make walking almost impossible).
A 30 km section of road construction around Foremost, plus my GPS would occasionally think that there was a road through a farmer's field, and the light was getting dim so I finally decided to simply head home, passing a few caches along the way. I saw a beautiful sunset (with the sun almost directly in my eyes) as I drove the last hour, getting home just as it was getting dark. There are still about 10 caches to search for in the area between Foremost and Lethbridge which should make for another interesting trip.
8:00 PM Photography
Here some scenes from south-eastern Alberta:
These are from Red Rock Coulee:
And this is not:
