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From Halifax, just beyond the village of Ketch Harbour is Sandy Cove Road --- park at the end. Cache is less than 1 km from there. On a recent visit, the street sign post was missing. It is a gravel road about 1.4km from the long Ketch Harbour wharf, in case the sign is gone for good!
Sandy Cove is home to an aquabiology research facility of the National Research Council of Canada --- the abundant, and sometimes malodorous, seaweed at this location is one of many marine resources studied there. The Cove also features post-card quality views of the historic Sambro Lighthouse (oldest continually operating lighthouse in the Western Hemisphere). If you can time your visit to co-incide with moonrise or sunrise over the lighthouse, it is a vista you will never forget!
As always along a sometimes eroding and active coast, be careful and keep an eye out for your companions. For example, I have hiked with children and my dog here, but some parents/owners might fret a little with the ocean and waves so nearby.
Crossing a tiny brook is your first challenge --- either leap across the ditch or walk through it at its sandy mouth. Next are several granite rock beaches, so wear sensible shoes, preferably with ankle support. The first beach is made up of "ostrich-egg" rounded granite stones, unusually perfect in form; next are jagged boulders atop monolithic granite sheets pounded by waves --- some areas are surprisingly flesh-like in smoothness; the granite is mostly white, but can also be brown, rosy pink, or blue-ish.
The cache was moved to the forest edge to keep it away from storm surges. If you keep hiking down the coast beyond the cache, there is an egg-rock beach with huge granite rocks --- just as smooth as the ones at the first beach. Dinosaurs instead of ostriches, perhaps?
There was an easier trail along the forest edge, but the many tree falls from Hurricane Juan have made it intermittent, at best. Keeping along the top of the beach will get you there.
Along the way you will see strawberries, cranberries, blueberries, trillium, lady slippers, beach peas, beach irises, and, in boggy areas, Newfoundland's Provincial flower, the Pitcher Plant (one of Canada's few carnivorous plants). Many are the lobster traps and colourful bouys stranded here after storms, too. Although it is "some slippery" down there, the tidal pools can be investigated for mussels, starfish, sea snails, and sea urchins. Be sensible near the breakers!
This cache is a "Foreign Coin"-theme ammo box. But there are also some fun little items for children inside.
Coins in the cache at the time of placing were from: Japan, Thailand, Honduras, Belgium, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Sweden, Venezuela, Italy, Caribbean Territories, Soviet Czechoslovakia, France, Holland, Trinidad and Tobago, USA, England, Ireland, Mexico, Germany, Austria and, courtesy of the "Q8T's", two coins from Kuwait (the "Q8T's" helped place the cache).
Here are some interesting web sites which relate to and explain the history of the Sandy Cove area:
http://www.nslps.com
This is the homepage for the Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society. Select "Sambro Lighthouse" from the scroll-down list and learn about this historic light --- established in 1758. The giant fresnel lens now at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax is from this lighthouse.
https://discoverhalifaxns.com/things-to-do/family-fun/historic-halifax-shipwrecks/
Although the lighthouse was built to deter disastrous wrecks at the island and adjacent dangerous shoals, it didn't deter them all (and German U-Boats in WWII frequently hunted here, too). This is the homepage for researching wrecks near Halifax’s coast. In 1945, a U-boat victim actually grounded just off the cache site!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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