Mother's Day and FTFs

This Mother's Day weekend I decided to head up to Comox to visit with my parents.  It more or less was to be a surprise for my mom, so on Saturday night after the wedding we were attending we loaded up and headed out.

I first had to drop Just Leafy off in Nanaimo so that she could do the same thing I was doing, but I have to tell you the rain was insane.
One of the things I hate the most about this Island is the Malahat.  This particular highway is stunning to look at, but the people that drive it drive like they have a death wish.  And this is even more true during horrific weather conditions.  So the first leg of my journey was no fun, but I got her there safe and sound.  But now I had to get from Nanaimo to Comox on a particularly long and dark section of the highway.
But at this time of night there was not many people driving in that direction, so I was left to my own devices.

I pulled in sometime before 1am and after a small chat with dad headed to bed.

I awoke early the next day to find mom up already, so came around the corner and surprised her saying "Happy Mothers Day".  She was so glad to see me and as I handed her the gift I got her she said that thing moms always say "You didn't have to, you are my gift".
But eagerly she opened the gift, and she was very pleased.  You seed my mom is a big Harry Potter fan, and I have taken to getting her HP collectibles lately.  Last year I got her a House Gryffindor scarf....  But this year she got Hermione's Time Turner.  A beautiful replica of the prop used in "The Prisoner of Azkaban".
She set forth to setting it up in it's display case, and found it a nice home on her china cabinet.

After breakfast we loaded up into the vehicle and drove down to Bowser for a bit of geocaching.
The reason we headed out there was to look for a specific XTREME GPS TEAM cache that had been archived but could possibly be out there.  If we did find it we would be the first to in 8 long years.
The cache was "EMERGENCY ON PLANET EARTH CACHE - GCK718" (the TEAM loved their caps lock).  The reason I have made the cache name and GC number red and struck through is to emulate geocaching.com and serve as a reminder this is an archived cache.
Sadly we could not find it, but we were not 100% hopeful that we would.  The site has had a lot of construction waste dumped here, and could serve for a small CITO someday.

Our caching friend bigbluemarble was also here the day before trying the same thing, and when she heard we would be there texted me some coordinates for a cache she and Cougar Kid had placed that was not published yet.  She asked us to not claim the FTF, but to log it as a test run.  We were happy to comply and did as asked, leaving the FTF spot to the first to find after publication.
My poor dad Postie Bear was kind of hoping for a FTF, and I told him not to worry that he would get his first one someday.  We continued with a few more caches, and headed off with mom to have a coffee and a snack.

The next day dad did his logs, and because we had found a couple that belonged to someone he knew he made sure he mentioned that in his logs.  That cacher later emailed my dad and said that she had a cache that had been out 24hrs already and that no one had claimed FTF on it yet, and in the email included the GC number and the name "Little Tiny Teeth - GC4C0PH".  We quickly looked it up on my iPad and realized it was back where we had done some caching the day before, not to far from the Denman Island Ferry.
I looked at dad and said "There's your chance, let's go".  And we quickly headed out the door.

We arrived at GZ (ground zero/posted coordinates) and after a brief search we had the cache in hand.  Nervously dad opened the container and looked at the log, and with a grin said "We are first to find"!
He collected the toonie which was the FTF to prize and we signed the log.
Dad was pretty happy, he was all grins.  And on the way home we stopped for a nice cup of Joe (coffee) and discussed future caching plans.  As the day moved forward I loaded back up and headed for home.

It was a fun semi-caching weekend, and it was so nice to help dad get his first FTF!  Thanks for reading!!