On Saturday the 5th of December several of the Fraser Valley's finet Cachers joined up with a few poker players for a Charity Poker Game.
Both Cachers & Non-Cacher's alike joined together to help benefit Youth Unlimited - the night saw a grand total of over $480 raised to help this great cause.
The cachers who came were from all age groups, with the youngest (fire webkinz) being 10 who managed 6th place in the first round. The hosts for the evening (Calvin Williams, Geardhedd & Curnew) outdid themselves to ensure that the guests were comfortable. Pizza, pop & an unlimited supply of goodies were on hand, including Catapult Jeff's own home made cookies!
Curnew graciously donated geocacher door prizes & when we first arrived we were lucky enough to win a Nano! The Tulameen Turtles were also presented with a special gift from Gearhedd - a personal designed letterbox stamp for the tramline geocache for Tulameen - It is beautiful & Amazing!
A while ago I sent out the call asking for stories about how your values match up with caching - how do the 2 inter-relate? Well we got a great reply from Disney Girl - my annual United Way donation of $500 will be going towards her charity of choice - Matthew's House in Abbotsford. A huge thank you for sharing! In this day and age it's nice to team up with others to make a difference. Here is her Story:
Trail route on EveryTrails.com and the YouTube video are at the end of the story.....
On Saturday Oct 24 Ken and I headed south into the U.S. to meet a group from PNW Adventures group. This group is into exploring back roads and off road areas in the Pacific North West.
We met up with the group in Lyman on Hwy #20 a few miles east of Sedro-Wooley, arriving with only 3 minutes to spare before the official departure time. Not bad timing considering we drove down from Maple Ridge BC to be there for 9.00 AM!
We piled into our 4X4's, 6 vehicles in all, and headed further east on Hwy #20 looking for Baker Road which would take us into the Mt Baker National Forest. As it turned out, we wouldn't have any use of the 4X4 side of our vehicles today, as the roads we chose were either paved or well groomed, moderately inclined gravel forest service roads.
We explored several roads that ended in mountain bowls; we checked out a snow mobile area, and drove up to a small parking area that provided an excellent view of a nearby glacier. At least that's what we think we did. The pockets of low hanging clouds obscured our view of the glacier, which, according to Mark, the trip leader, is something quite beautiful to see.
Down the mountain road we went, back to the main paved road that ran north along side Baker Lake, and followed the road past the end of the paved section until it too turned into a groomed FSR. We went as far as the end of Baker lake, were we spent some time enjoying a late lunch, the scenery, and some good company.
Taking Care of our Environment is so very important. Without it we are nothing. In today's day and age we hear so very much about be Carbon Neutral, keep our skies blue & go green. But how much of it is really geared towards being a marketing promo and how much is geared towards truly making a difference.
Take for example the "We're Going Green" contest - where every ballot is paper and there are 100,000 of them - how green is that?
In caching it becomes an even more aspect as we as cachers tend to drive to each and every cache that we get and in some cases if a prize sounds like we want it - well we'll even go out of our way and add a higher carbon footprint in search of a chance for that prize.
Well in caching I believe that we need to take responsibility and do our part for going green. What does that mean in caching? Well we all have our own views on this. Mine are only mine - they are no more then that - my opinions - so what would be an "Carbon Neutral" way to cache in our view?
In August of this year we ventured up the backroads of Copper & Placer Mountains - it started out as an adventure with the anticipation of using some of the sights we found for next years event. What we found were memories that were long forgotten, memories that would also take me back some years ago through the photos of time in an album of my own.
You see many years ago I roamed these streets of no name at the tender age of 2, the roads were different but many of the places are the same. It seems that time changes nothing & everything at the same time. I invite you to join in the days adventure as we take you through the Placer Mountain roads (alas we did not make it to the lake) through the Ashnola transverse & up along the back roads.
Taking Care of our Environment is so very important. Without it we are nothing. In today's day and age we hear so very much about be Carbon Neutral, keep our skies blue & go green. But how much of it is really geared towards being a marketing promo and how much is geared towards truly making a difference.