It's A Small World After All

Sometimes the world is a very small place.

Case in point:  Yesterday morning I went to Charlotte North Carolina to attend a CITO event in Idlewild Park.  As I rolled up I saw another geocacher in the parking lot (not that unusual, given the circumstances).

I introduced myself, and after a bit of conversation it was apparent he was not from the area. He was passing thru and decided to attend the event as a break from the road. I asked him where he was from.

"Canada".

Me too!  I asked which part.

"Niagara".

Me too!  I then asked if he happened to attend the First Light 2014 event near Niagara Falls that I had attended.  He had.  He had also attended the Dr. House's 7th Annual New Years Cachin' Eve event.  To top it off, he actually owns some of the geocaches we did that day.  He even has pictures of Yours Truly holding the geocaching quilt my wife made.

So, to sum up: by random chance, two weeks ago, I attended a couple events in southern Ontario with people I had not met before, and we found some caches together.  Yesterday, 12 days later, also by random chance, I attended an event 600 miles away in a different country, and ran into the exact same person at an event, and we found some caches together.

That, my friends, is the definition of a small world (also see definition of "coincidence").

So the CITO event was pretty cool too.  We spent some time walking the park and picking up trash, finding a few caches along the way.

I brought my dog, Bailey, with me.  She had a great time... for a while.

It has rained a fair bit the night before so there was a lot of standing water.  We had to slosh through many muddy paths and marshy areas.  It should be noted that Bailey dislikes water a lot, but even she was getting into the fun... mostly.

I say mostly because at one stage the rain returned and we got soaked in a matter of minutes. Bailey didn't take too kindly to the deluge of water falling on her.

We were at a cache at the far end of the park when the rain hit.  We immediately started heading towards the cars, but it was still a long bushwhack to get there.  Along the way Bailey got into the whole "walking in the rain" bit, and she started to enjoy herself.

Once we got back to the cars we headed off to a pizza joint for lunch, and a much needed dry-out.

All in all, a very interesting day with a great group of geocachers.