A little Adventure.

So yesterday some friends and I decided to check out The Screaming Tunnel. Since it was the middle of the day, and winter! it was a bit of a silly idea. But- we had fun. Just so you know, the camera worked just fine, the matches lit and only blew out because of the wind and we didn't hear any scream. What did happen was we got covered in snow, and cold :) Ahh, the joys of December in Canada. A little bored we went on a hike through the other side of the tunnel. We checked out the ruins of the old house and found that creepy looking well. We started to notice these white shapes (sometime square, sometimes rectangles) stained on some trees. So we'd walk over to the tree with the mark on it..then notice another tree just ahead and walk towards that one. It was a bit odd. Sometime the marks were on healthy trees, sometime they were on fallen half rotted trees. We followed them unconsciously for a bit. Then we noticed an old stone wall that lead into the side of an embankment. We walked over fallen trees and through some nasty thorn bushes (by accident of course!) to check it out. We decide it must have been an old road, and new construction plopped down some fresh dirt. That's when we saw it. We had come across this little clearing. As the three of us stood on the ridge, my friend Robin says "Hey, what's that?". Kevin and I look to where she's pointing..."What's what?" we both say. "That right there!" she says, pointing again. I still maintain that I couldn't see what she was talking about, but Kevin trudges down the hill, around some more trees and stands at the spot where she's pointing. Now I figure he's going to get down there and ask Robin again what she saw, but nope, that didn't happen! He leans over, moves this one big old rock, and pulls out a bright red Folgers plastic aroma-seal container. He walks back to us, and we check out the container. It looks ok- no animal scratches, the lid is on. So we open it. That's when the real adventure began! Inside were all these new, un-opened items. Lipsol, pens, a muisc cd, kleenex pack, some candles- and a note pad with a pencil inside a baggie. We open the baggie and a single sheet of paper is also inside. We decide to read the note first..Congratulations! it says! Turns out we stumbled upon a GPS treaure hunt. It talks about the company that dropped it off, and it asks you to log in the notebook the date you found the 'cache' as it's called, if you found it on purpose or if you were looking for it et cetera. Then it asks you to log on to this website and track that you found it. So- for your trouble they ask you to take something from the container, but to please leave something behind as well. As luck would have it, Robin had just bought a new multi-pack of halls so she dropped two packs in and we took a candle each. We then ripped out a sheet from the note pad, wrote down the web address..and started to head back to the car. It was very cool (pun intended!) and dark outside now. We had been walking out there for 3 hours! We head back to my place- Robin and Kevin had to leave- so I check out this website. Turns out that this GPS Treasure Hunt is currently taking place in 219 countries with just over 9 000 active caches. The one we found was deposited Sept. '03 and only one other person has found it before us. The site was awesome as it gives you instructions on how to drop your own cache and log it, as well as pick a cache you'd like to find. I think I might be looking for some of these to find for the summer. Quick weekend get-a-ways just a few hours drive away east/west/north/south of where you are there is sure to be afew caches waiting to be found. I smell a treasure hunt. . .