Oh, Canada!

Sunday, August 30, 2015           Wellsville, NY

            Taking a short cut through Canada almost got me home today. Perhaps if I hadn’t taken those lengthy wrong turns in Buffalo, or not missed my exit in Hamilton, I might have made it. As it is, I’m totally exhausted and two more hours (the last hour in the dark) would have been more than I could feel comfortable with. Besides, I have to give the cats their last-evening-till-mom-comes-home party.

            It was an eventful day. First thing, I found myself discussing geocaching with a Canadian customs worker. They were pulling aside one car in five to take a survey on tourist visits from the US. I’ve got her really curious. She even asked the name of the cache I’d be visiting first.

            Which was my first find outside the US. On my statistics, it will now say I’ve “cached in two countries,” and the world map will show which two. It was a remarkable cache, just a repurposed plastic coffee can, but it had SIX trackables in it. If that proves anything, it proves that Canadian cachers are kinder to trackables, because two were geocoins (originals, not proxies) and their owners obviously trusted that they would not ‘vanish.’

            I had pre-downloaded five caches in the rural stretch of the Canadian motorways to make it easier to get on and off, and find more solitude to search. I missed one, daydreaming my way past the exit, but was rewarded when I went for the next one.  This was really creative. A good-sized lock-and-lock container had a magnet epoxied to the lid, and a ¾ log had a cavity chiseled from the bottom and a matching steel plate screwed to the top of the cavity. The container would not fall out even if the log was rolled vigorously. A casual seeker might lift the log and think “nothing underneath” never noticing it was hollow. The hint was “magnetic.” I lifted the log and thought it was too light-weight for an apparently non-rotted piece of wood, and looked. Clever. It was empty of swag, so I added a little.

The next one was far from solitary; it was right between the parking lot and drive-through food lane of a very busy ‘rest stop,’ which in Canada is much like the ones on the PA Turnpike only bigger and more hectic. I had to linger quite awhile pretending that a recycling bin was fascinating both before grabbing the skirt-lifter and before replacing it. This was my only micro find in Canada.

Then I went in and rewarded myself with a large iced coffee. I knew I was really in Canada when a lady I was passing said loudly to her companions, “EH?” There are fewer flags displayed than in the US, where every large business and half the residences seem to fly one. When a Canadian flag was displayed, it didn’t seem at all strange to me. The only real adjustment I had to make to Canada was using the inner, smaller-font numbers of my speedometer, as speed limits were in km/hr. Having the mile markers and signs also in kilometers was actually beneficial, because I always came to a town or interchange before my intuition said I would. It made the time pass quickly.

            The last cache I had downloaded was a “Travel Bug Hotel,” and I had decided that the Bristol Bunny would be dropped there, if I found the cache. New York State seems to have mostly micros, and once I’m home it will be at least a couple weeks until I’m in a position to hunt down anything larger. This gives the Bunny the best chance of moving on quickly and racking up more miles. I gave it a good ride, South Dakota to Ontario. I did indeed find the cache, a camouflaged food-service-sized peanut butter jar, and swapped the Bunny for a lovely geocoin from Germany that turned out to have three rabbits imprinted on one side. The damn things DO multiply! This one is visiting states and Pennsylvania is on the list.

            Shortly after that I hit the Hamilton traffic, missing the exit for the bypass. I took the QEW to Niagara, and decided at the last minute to take the Niagara border crossing instead of the Buffalo one. This decision cost me at least an hour of travel time, but I did get a view of the Falls crossing the bridge. I was so tired (and hungry) I was practically incoherent with the American customs officer and couldn’t even remember that Port Huron was where I’d entered Canada. But finally he waved me on. I got lost numerous times navigating Niagara, NY, and Buffalo, which it turns out I needed to go through to get where I was going anyway. I actually had to go west for awhile on I-90 to find my south-going exit. Déjà vu! Somehow the little two-lane road I took south eventually dumped me east of Olean, around 6:00 p.m.

            With Route 44 closed for construction, I was looking at either finding a place to stay or getting home after dark. I chose the latter. Now my journey is almost over, and I’m beginning to think of its ending, what I’ve accomplished, and, alas, what needs to be done at home. I was away from all that… sigh.