On the return trip from GeoWoodstock in June we made a stopover in British Columbia. Because it was enroute, it was a great chance to do some Geocaching in Canada’s most western province. We were there last September and obviously couldn’t wait to get back. Our first stop was caching at Stanley Park in Vancouver.

From Sacramento we flew into Vancouver early in the morning and after checking into the hotel we headed off to Stanley Park. The 1000 acre park is located close to the city’s downtown and offers visitors walking trails, beautiful views and wildlife, all in a surrounding forest of cedar, hemlock and fir trees. There are also quite a few statues and monuments in the park. The one below is of Lord Stanley, who was Governor General of Canada in 1888 when the park was officially opened.

We never got the chance to visit the park on our last visit to the city in the fall of 2006, just a few months before a windstorm devastated parts of the park. We were happy to see, at least where we were, that there was little remnants of the storm. The park looked great, but more on that later!

Since it was early and we were hungry we decided that our first stop should be for a bite to eat. Our hotel was located near the bottom of Granville Street so we walked to the waterfront and caught an Aquabus, a water taxi, over to Granville Island. The water taxis run quite frequently connecting various ports. They are very convenient and rather cool to be on.

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Another seven days goes quickly by and it’s time to take a moment and have a look at a few things that went on in the Geocaching world this past week:

It seems that in addition to announcing to thieves that you have a GPS unit by mounting it on your car windshield you may also be opening yourself up for a $100. fine if you live in California and Minnesota where it is illegal to mount anything on your cars windshield. However, there are now bills in motion to exempt GPSs from this law. Here’s more on this from the LA Times.

Geocachers in Zanesville, Ohio paid tribute to military personnel who have been killed since 2001. The event featured a potluck lunch followed by a ceremony recognizing 21 fallen Ohio military personnel. Click here for more.

And there are more Geocachers in the news this week! This time it’s Cacheka (aka Kathy Sarafino) of Sebastian, Florida. She is a member of the Spacecoast Geocachers Association and in addition to Geocaching Cacheka and her husband Bob are avid Rvers too. Read more about her here.

On a different note, apparently a group of travellers had a vacation from hell when their GPS led them astray and left them stranded on the edge of a cliff. You can read more about their harrowing experience here and here.

In a related story our friends, the Northwoods GeoCats, recently posted an article about the need for a bit of common sense when reading GPSr directions, as well a great example why you cannot rely 100% on these units. Check it out here.

And speaking of friends, it was nice to hear that Hick from Geocaching With Hick@Heart is still alive and kickin’! No need to send out the search party now.

These were a few interesting Geocaching related news articles that we came across this week that we wanted to share.

Keep on cachin’!

The Hoosier Family from central Indiana recently got involved with Geocaching and have created an online Geocache hunt they are calling the Geocaching Blog Carnival. There are four clues hidden within their blog and the fourth clue will lead you directly to the ‘cache’. When you find the cache, log your visit on their comment form. All entries will be placed in a draw for a hardcopy of a book called ‘Mistaken Identity’. Good luck to all! You can find out more here.

Our friend Elin Carlson from Geocaching with EMC of Northridge was featured in an article this week in the Los Angeles Daily News. We featured Elin here on Geocaching Online back in January when she was nearing 15,000 caches. Since then she has picked up another 1500 and obviously still going strong. Click here to read the Daily News article about the #3 rated Geocacher in the world!

We had a bit of bad news this week in the Geocaching world with a couple of bomb scares. In Midland, Texas a suspicious package was found and the bomb squad was called in. After using their bomb robot to x-ray the package it was found to be a Geocache. You can read more here.

And in Ottawa another suspicious package was reported when it was discovered under the Transitway bridge. The bridge and area was closed down for over fur hours and eventually the cache was blown up. There’s more here and here.

As you can imagine this has caused quite a stir in the Geocaching community with concern over cache placement and possible restrictions. Darin, over at The Squidzone, has posted an extensive article on how to keep Geocaching from being banned. It’s a great read, check it out.

On a lighter note, a followup article was posted in the Nova News Now, a local newspaper to our home, that tells of the positive results of a recent Geocaching information session called the Kings County Adventure. Check out the pic of the three amigos here!

These were a few interesting Geocaching related news articles that we came across this week that we wanted to make note of.

Keep on cachin’!