New West & Surrey Caching

ABOVE: Caboose at Carre Heritage Square in Mallairdville

Had a fun filled day of caching with Bowser98, TRWFAN, and MrTJ in the New Westminister and Surrey areas on this past Sunday, a glorious sunny day on one of the first days of Spring.

We met up in New West at Moody Park to look for a couple of caches there, then we moved through New West picking off several more caches before we headed over the bridge to Surrey.

One of the nicer places we visited was earlier in the morning while MrTJ and I were on our way in from Maple Ridge. We stopped off in Coquitlam in the Mallairdville area so I could grab a cache at the Carre Heritage Square, the centre piece of Mallairdville celebrating the French heritage of the area.

You can find a good write up on the history of the area here

This is a living museum, with several original buildings on site, such as Mackin House and the CPR railway station. The local community have done a wonderful job of presenting the history of the area through means such as informative sign boards on the grounds, plus they have various activities through out the year.

Let's zoom back over to New West where we continued picking off caches around the Royal City, then we caravanned over the Patullo Bridge to continue caching along the Scott Road corridor.

On the trail in a wooded area on our way to the cache called "Hmscherlic Speaks" we came across a male Pileated Woodpecker who let us get very close to him; I took the opportunity to shoot some good close up video of him pecking at a small stump. As for the cache Hmscherlic Speaks, well, that's a whole story to itself....you have to read the log write ups from the various cachers; go to GCZV20 and view the stories written about this cache!

Another of my favourite places to visit during the day was Burns Bog; there are two caches there we had not yet done. And being no fools, we knew it was a lot better to go in the cool weather, than in the warm summer months. The last cache we did here was called "Plasma Bandits", and they lived up to their name. We were swarmed as we searched for that cache, so today was the day we picked to find this one before the little pests awoke from their winter slumber.

On the day we searched for a total of 21 caches, with 19 found and two DNFs where the caches had been muggled...not bad for the amount of driving involved....

As usual, it was more fun to get out and stretch our legs than it was to add up the numbers to our creds; having said that, I was glad to finally get to the 1600 mark. With the poor weather and the snowy winter, I had been hovering around the 1580'ish mark for what seems like forever. Glad to get that minor milestone out of the way....it felt like a little hump I just couldn't get over...not irritating or annoying, but still satisfying to get past it nonetheless....

Video can be viewed by clicking in the centre of the image below: enjoy!!