Treasure Chest

[mcdunc]

While walking the spit yesterday, surveying the damage, my wife and I found a buried treasure chest. Sorry Guilly, it wasn't your bar and lines....BTW Thanks to Mark, Ken et al, who returned my "missing" board on Sunday.

You can see from the pic that the "treasure" included pieces of gold, pearls, medallions, rings, waterlogged cigars, shoe decorations, rubber lizards, marbles and the ubiquitous Pirates of the Caribbean Pez dispenser. This is one of our more unusual finds from walking on the beach, not as profitable as a money clip, but well worth the walk. Saw some more dead Grebes at the end of the Spit Jim, but no way to tell how the birds on the island made out.

The Spit didn't look too bad. Some sand washed off the rocks, but it seems the sand taken off the top was deposited downwind of the heavier gravel, which increased the width of the rigging area. The lake side has less sand now and the walk out will be hard on the "tenderfoot".

Dunc

Treasure Chest

Repairing the Road

Lake side minus some sand

Where the water broke over the spit

More exposed rock

Rigging area widened

Rocks deposited in bush from wave action

[Garrett]

Dunc, thanks for posting those. It's good to see the Spit relatively healthy after all of that. Hopefully the birds made it, but on the same note it'd be great to see Sunset squeaky clean.

That treasure chest looks like Guilly's too. On Sunday he went down to the spit "looking for his bar and lines"... he probably just wanted to make sure his treasure stayed buried.

[mcdunc]

Yeah, I recognized his brand of cigars!!

It occurred to me that the treasure chest might be a GPS cache? Washed out of its hiding spot by the wave action? Otherwise, why the great variety of things, some for kids and some not...? Anyone know much about geocaching?

Dunc

[andrew]

You could be right about the geocache. I have a few friends who are into the geocaching thing. If it is a geocache, somebodies going to be spending a long time trying to find it now. :)

You can search for caches at http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?country_id=5&x=10&y=11. I looked under "Letterbox hybrid" cache and only 1 showed up in Manitoba. Not sure what other category that box might be classified under.

On the other hand, it could be Guilly's stash of Pirates of the Caribbean toys as Garret points out.

[mcdunc]

When I logged into Geocaching.com I did find lots of hidden caches in the area. (You have to create a username, etc...) One called "Ghost Beach" looks like it might be the one, with a location .3 miles down the Spit.

I will have to contact the guy who hid it. Rats.... I thought I was going to retire on the riches...(even if I had to split it with Guilly )

Dunc

[Guilly]

stop messing around with my treasure chest!! I'm planning on retiring on that pirates of the carribean merchandise! I'm guessing in 40 years it'll go up in value. I had to bury it cause I couldn't help myself from playing with those toys.

[monti289]

It isn't the 'ghost beach' cache. We found that one last summer and it is a very different container.
I'm guessing some kids just planted it for fun.
Ed

[mcdunc]

Thanks Ed,
I sent an email to the person who hid the "Ghost Beach" cache and haven't received a reply. His online description of the contents sort of matches what we found, except for the cigars but the location of the cache (according to the Google map) is a little further south than where we discovered it. Is there any chance the container could have been changed?
Dunc

[monti289]

The original owner will tell you for sure, but the container we found at the correct co-ordinates is a PVC pipe with a waterproof screw top. It's located about 20M from the end of the spit so maybe the box you found is Guilly's after all.

Ed