Anchor Toss - DOC - Virtual Reward Virtual Cache

Rock Lake Pictographs

This is a very special geocache to us because this came to us as a gift, for 4000 special hiders. And for our family, it comes after losing our main hider and inspiration, Super_Doc April 2015. We’re not sure what constituted the 4000 caches that were awarded to favored hiders, we certainly don’t have the most caches, or the most favorite points, it may be from all the maintenance over the years or the people who go out of their way to find the Super_Doc hides, whatever the reason, it was pretty special. That makes this even more of a tribute cache, because of how much he meant to so many, we decided we needed to place this Virtual Cache in a special Doc place. And boy do we have just the place!

Rock Lake and the phantom pictographs…… But first, in case you don’t know Super_Doc, a few words. Born 1994 and gone too soon in 2015 @ 20 years old. He was highly special needs, and we won’t go into what he couldn’t do, but here is what he could.... he smiled at lights and it was contagious, he would giggle endlessly if you played the light and dark games. He made people listen to him without ever speaking a word. People would tell him secrets, Big Ones, knowing he was the best secret keeper ever. He had a lot of obstacles but fierce advocates and friends that stuck to him for life. They say, that if someone lives in others memories, they are not gone. We have never felt like Doc is very far. Keep enjoying his caches, he has lots of love to share with all.

And now…. Let me take you back to Aug 1996, Doc was 2 1⁄2 years old. When he was small we could still get him around easier, not like the huge wheelchairs in later years. Even then his ‘Gorilla Stroller’ had ropes on the front for one parent to pull and one parent to push, and boy did we take him places regular wheelchairs didn’t go. We were told by other campers and staff there was amazing pictographs on Rock Lake. Described as being down the lake a few klms and hang a hard right, and right on the corner on the sheer rock wall you will see them. We couldn’t take Doc in a regular canoe, too tippy, so we bought an inflatable boat, it was one of the more expensive ones, 7 compartments, couldn’t afford to ‘pop it’ in the middle of the lake with a kid that couldn’t swim. So we had 2 paddles, an anchor, and lunch for all of us, meds for Doc for the morning and lunch time. We also had a big beach umbrella, he burned easily. Didn’t really need 2 paddles, because one parent had to hold Doc upright while the other paddled.

Inflatable on Rock Lake

Day was nice, bright and off we set. It was a beautiful ride down, turned out to be 2.5 klms down the lake. Side note: Did you know that even if you’re a fairly thin person, your butt hangs down pretty low in an inflatable that makes 3 bums hanging down, I think that’s a lot of drag, (just sayin!). Found the ‘hard right’ that looked like the spot a pictograph should be and found a sheer rock wall. Went back and forth around that area for well over an hour. By now we had we came back around the corner and headed back down main part of lake. Wind had picked up considerably, hmmmmm (remember the 3 bums hanging low, big shade umbrella protecting the little one, one parent only paddling at a time), now add wind. We were not making much headway to get back, and we were getting Very tired. I know some will believe this as an exaggeration, but I tell you in all sincerity, we used our anchor (which was a big boulder we screwed an eyebolt into and mom painted with fishies). We ended up throwing the anchor as far ahead of the boat as we could and pulling on the line to bring the boat along behind against the wind and waves. We did this the entire way back. The problem was, with the anchor up, we drifted backwards faster than we were going in the proper direction. It was a very long time ago, I don’t remember the hour we got back from that trek, but it was well past dinner and Doc hadn’t had food or meds in quite a while.

Sun Protection, Doc is at the bottom of the picture just relaxing

Kissed the beach when we got back to solid land and got us all sorted out in the van and went back to our site @ Mew Lake. Of course Doc didn’t complain, kept on smiling (he wasn’t paddling!) and didn’t seem that put out for having to wait for dinner. Pretty easy going on his exhausted parents. We have been back to Rock Lake since, but never again with Doc, to find the elusive pictographs. We DID find them, and pretty much in the location that they were described to us the first time. The pictographs aren’t super vivid and there is a lot of red rust colouring that is way brighter than the pictographs are and that is probably what confused us. Now that we know what they look like, we can find them easily every time. We now go back there in a canoe as a way of remembering one of our many many adventures in Algonquin Park and smile at how such a hard won day can live a lifetime with fondness in one’s mind and make one thankful for the easy and hard wins in life. And yes….. we bought a 1.2 hp motor for that darn boat the next week!

Picture of us returning to find the Rock Lake Pictographs

Such good times. Thank you for visiting this special place and sharing our memories of an adventurous kid and his crazy parents.

To log this cache, please post a photo of the pictograms taken from the posted coordinates, with a thumbs up or your GPS in the photo. If you wish to post a selfie with the pictograms, that's great - however that would be optional.

Doc with fellow geocachers

Doc in 2015 - Age 20

Virtual Reward - 2017/2018

This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between August 24, 2017 and August 24, 2018. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards on the Geocaching Blog.