Trail Hound

From Cape Cod to Quebec: Have GPS, will travel

Cape Cod tourists bring home saltwater taffy, beach shells and Cuffy's T-shirts.  A traveling geocacher brings home a logged cache from each destination.

This August, after persistent lobbying from the kids for a trip to a foreign country, we embarked on a recession-modified international excursion to Montreal, with a stop in Burlington, Vermont to take in New England's west coast. With 897,380 active geocaches hidden around the world, bagging a souvenir geocache shouldn't be difficult.

There are differences, of course, when caching outside of one's usual domain.  First, there's different topography and vegetation.  Even relatively near regions like the Lake Champlain Valley have taller trees, particulary more birch, as well as more rocks and higher hills.  The remote but accessible tall-pine forest hillside home of  "Cache Naked" seemed to capture the mellow, laid-back atmosphere of The Green Mountain State so it was an ideal souvenir.  Plus, it was only a mile from the hotel - a bonus when nongeocaching family members are impatiently waiting.

Montreal presented additional challenges.  Quebec's cache pages on geocaching.com are en français.  Reaching back thirty-plus years to my high school and college French, I was able to identify an urban micro, Avenue du Mont Royal - Est #3, about two miles from our hotel.  This cache should have been easy, according to previous logs (also en français), but not knowing how the local authorities would feel about someone casing the streetlights, utility boxes and a bus stop, I moved on fairly quickly without making the find.  My next attempt, Saint-Stanislas - Eglises #12 brought me to a delightful neighborhood in the Plateau and to an elegant, neo-Roman church surrounded by a peaceful little park.  I quickly found the cache, which was well removed from the street and didn't attract attention from anyone other than the occasional dog walker.

The most dramatic views in Montreal and Burlington weren't from my furtive souvenir-caching forays, although there may be caches hidden along Lake Champlain's Battery Park or in the Frederick Law Olmstead-designed Mount Royal Park.  Montreal's Olympic Park and Botanical Gardens are also prime stops for touring geocachers.  But if you want to find your way around a new place like a local, follow your geocaching GPS.

Photos, from top:

Sculpture garden at Mount Royal, Montreal

Lake Champlain from Burlington, VT

Rose garden at Montreal's Botanical Garden