To Big Thrumcap and Beyond !

On Sunday, caching buddy Jacqui and I took the McNab's Island Ferry over to McNabs Island for a day of geocaching.  Since the most remote cache we were after was at the top of Big Thrumcap, the drumlin at the ocean-end of the island, we had the ferry drop us there.   The drumlin is quite overgrown with waist-high ferns and trees that were toppled in 2004 when Hurricane Juan came through.  We had Wendy with us and as usual she helped find the best route up the hill; well the best route for someone who is less than three feet tall !   Sometimes her choices weren't optimal but as she bats around 80% we aren't complaining.

Did I mention that we're in the midst of a heat wave with temperatures up to 35 C with the Humidex factored in.

Suffice to say it was HOT.

As we neared the coordinates of the treasure, staring down at the screens of our GPSs, Jacqui and I stumbled in circles around and through some evergreens calling to each other: "I'm at 6 metres here", or "I've got 10 metres here--I'm heading toward you".  In this way we zoomed in on the location of the cache.   Once we were a few metres away we stop looking at the screen and start searching in earnest.   When we spotted the cache we felt a bit silly.  It wasn't exactly small, or hard to spot !

It was an honest-to-gosh, fulled-sized treasure chest !

And oh the wonders it contained .

There were Doubloons, and foreign coins of many varieties -- all of it fake -- and all of it quite wonderful.  There were  "jewels" and packages of pencils and in the plastic bag some travel bugs with tracking numbers that we can drop off in a cache somewhere else.

Yours truly going a tad gold-mad !

When we lifted the top compartment off we found more (albeit creepier) stuff underneath.

Bones, a skull, one shoe and strangely enough, Christmas decorations, and of course, MORE coins.

This cache has only been found twice this year so Jacqui and I were thrilled to be the third group to find it.  

After putting everything back as we found it, signing the log, taking a trinket and leaving a trinket, we set off back down the hill following our own trail through the broken bracken.

Thrumcap's physical connection to McNabs Island is by a thread of land that one day will be breached by the Atlantic.  After that happens accessing the "Treasure cache" is going to be even harder.

From a distance Thrumcap's typical tear-dropped drumlin shape is easy to see.

The island is criss-crossed with many roads and trails;  without a good map and these marvellous newly-added sign posts it's pretty easy to get lost.

We headed up Rifle Range Trail taking a brief side trip along Searchlight Road to look for a cache hidden near the shore.

The cache was hidden in the roots of an up-turned tree.  Jacqui checked out the signed log to see who had found it before us.

We'd spent a couple of hours slogging up and down Thrumcap finding that "Treasure Chest" so we were keen to look for a few easy caches one of which was back on the Rifle Range Trail.  We were pretty sure it was in this tree but after 20 minutes of unsuccessful searching we had to give up.

While we searched, Wendy rested in the shade.

Later we settled down to have a picnic lunch near what had been an old rifle target shooting range. Years ago this equipment raised up targets;  now it is sinking into a widening bog.

Nearby I found some sprouting "Indian Pipe".  This fascinating plant lacks Chlorophyll.

Farther up the road we came across three concrete rangefinder platforms.  Inside one of them Jacqui found a small cache tucked under a rock in a crevice in one the building's walls.

With less than an hour left before we had to meet up with the ferry, we hustled over to Fort McNab. There were many marvellous buildings to explore but in finding two more caches we ran out of time and had to leave their exploration for another visit.

Our final hike down the shore to our meet-up point got us there with 10 minutes to spare.  It had been a full, tiring, fun day.  I'm looking forward to our next caching adventure there.

It's hard to believe that even though McNabs Island is a short boat ride away from downtown Halifax many locals have never visited it.  Their loss.

A boardwalk walk ...

Eastern Passage gets its name from the narrow strait separating the mainland from McNabs Island.  McNabs Island is the largest island in Halifax Harbour and is now a provincial park. 

This "Eastern Passage" into the harbour is not the main shipping channel due to its shallow depths; the main shipping channel lies west of McNabs Island. The Eastern Passage is largely used by small recreational boats and fishing vessels during inclement weather as the island provides shelter from prevailing winds.

Cutbacks at the nearby CFB Shearwater military base and the shutdown of the Ultramar refinery seriously impacted the economy of Eastern Passage in the 1990s. One response was the redevelopment of the small craft harbour, long known as "the Creek" or "the cove" but rechristened in 1996 as "Fisherman's Cove", a tourist attracton which combines a working fishing harbour with (seasonal) gift shops a couple of restaurants and a pub.

In the summer you can hire a boat at Fisherman's Cove to take you across to McNabs for a day of hiking.

Next to Fisherman's Cove is a marvellous boardwalk on McCormack's Beach, a small peninsula that sticks out into the harbour. 

I've taken the dogs a couple of times for a walk around the boardwalk.  It's a very popular spot for a walk and I understand why.

The top pic is of a lobster boat heading out to sea with McNabs Island in the background.

The next pic is of Wendy and Chandler on the boardwalk looking toward Fisherman's Cove and past that, Halifax in the distance.

And from the tip of the boardwalk looking back toward Eastern Passage.  My house is only 1 km from this lovely spot.