Christmas day walk by the airport

We took advantage an unusually mild, sunny Christmas day to go for a long walk on the dike by the airport. The sand flats were beautiful and one place had numerous bear tracks preserved in the mud. The dogs had a great time and we found about 4 interesting caches. Katie went to dinner with her boy-friends family and Mike didn't feel like coming on the walk.

Tree series of caches

On Dec 23rd we went for a beautiful, snowy winter walk on the horse and hiker trails ,to place a series of 6 caches. These caches will be published for the Pink Mug event on Jan 11th. This is an area where our family has traditionally gone on a Christmas eve walk. It's alwaysa special place in the winter.

December birthday

Turning 3

Dec fun

December pictures from our house and a trip to Wildlights on my birthday.

Lorax series of caches

To celebrate our year of geocaching and 500 finds, we decided to put some caches out in Barnhartvale. The first series we did was 2 kid caches and a micro in a series based on the Lorax book. We hid them in an area that was devastated by the pine beetle and then by overly aggressive slavage logging, so the story of the Lorax seemed to really fit. Even though we put them out in the mist of very cold (-20C) weather and even though they were aimed at children we've had a lot of response from the geocaching community. We've had 16 people find them already and a local cacher, Couloir has added to the series. He also did a write up about them on the Interior Geocaching Blog

.Lorax Caches

Interior Geocaching blog

Katie at " at the far end of town"

Katie and Muffy looking for Couloir's cache.

We took Katie out to do our caches and we all found Couloir's

Caching in Nov.

Near the end of November, we went on a beautiful winter walk above Rosehill to finish off a puzzle cache that we had started. It was snowy, but sunny and it turned out to be a great walk. The puzzle cache was amazing and our favourite of all that we have done this year. It turned out to be almost our 500th find.

Rick at the final stage of  "4 Elements"

Road trip

Yesterday some friends and I took a road trip to Salmon Arm and Armstrong. We were mostly shopping at the quilt stores, but I wanted to check out Denise's new gallery in downtown Salmon Arm. It's called the Osprey gallery and it's on Alexander, which is the one-way street heading down from the highway towards the lake. Denise wants some of my weaving in her gallery and I needed to have a look at it before I bring her some scarves. The gallery is beautiful and elegant and has three of Denise's art quilts and several of John Burrows fantastic paintings.

We drove home through Falkland and found a great little yarn store that we didn't know was there. We stopped for a break at a charming little 50's style diner in Westwold and got home just before dark.

Cache Creek, Ashcroft Trip

Ashcroft manor -not open this time of year

On Monday we took another holiday geocaching trip to Cache Creek, Ashcroft and Logan Lake. The weather got worse as the day progressed and we had to do some of the walks in a cold rain. It was still a fun get- away -day and we found over 20 caches. We ended up having dinner in a charming little pub in Logan Lake and trying for a few more caches in the dark on the way home.

Ashcroft heritage fire hall

a gold country cache at a heritage church in Ashcroft

a beautiful cemetary in Ashcroft

the view from the cemetary

  Barnes and Willard lake near Ashcroft. The fog lifted just long enought to get a glimpse of the lake

  Highland Valley Copper mine near Logan Lake in the dusk

the wind was howling and the temp was below freezing up here

Turtle Valley Drive

turtle valley near Chase


On Saturday Rick and Katie and I set off on an all day geocaching trip through Turtle Valley, Skimikin Valley, Sunnybrae on the Shuswap and Sorrento. We ended up doing 38 caches for the day and had lots of fun. The weather was damp and foggy, but not raining. Some of the caches ended up involving a walk up through the forest on the Fly hills near Skimikin lake. We also hit Herald Provincial Park near Sunnybrae and even did a few caches by flashlight in Sorrento. One especially was memorable because it ended up being up a tree and in the dark I thought something was going to fall on my head!  It was a great day to spend as a mini-vacation and a stress relief.

trutle valley ball field

donkey refuge off the turtle valley road

welcoming committee at the donkey farm 

Tappen and Sunnybrae

 Herald Prov. Park in the Shuswap

I've been taking a small 5 day holiday from Nov 11th until the 16th. One of the days I did some extra babysitting and had Mia for an afternoon on Friday. Katie came over and helped play with orange , pumpkin spiced paly dough that I made.

Falkland Pillar

Last sunday after the guild sale we went on a small geo caching trip with Katie through the Chase/ Falkland Road . We stopped and hiked up to the pillar at Joyce lake. We've seen the pillar from the distance before, but had never hiked up to look at it up close.

View of Falkland from a cache up the hill. The weather was great and was actually the last warm. sunny day of the fall.