Itasca, Geocaching and Bee Stings

Itasca, Geocaching and Bee Stings

By Allan Olson

Oh boy, what a weekend, chock full of adventure and fun.

If you haven’t already guessed, it wasn’t exactly a stay-at-home weekend; it was ultimately a fun and relaxing weekend.

My wife and I had talked off and on all week about going to see the Headwaters of the might Mississippi, but we never really made a decision until Saturday morning. We had breakfast, and decided to get packed for the day.

The weather promised to be hot again, and we decided to pack the swimming gear and lunch in the cooler for the road. We packed towels, swimsuits, changes of clothes for six and enough food for four growing children and two parents.

We loaded the van, cooler, towels and drinking water. I checked to make sure Bob had fresh water and a full dish, and we hit the highway.

On our arrival, the kids were excited. “I remember this place!” “Let’s pretend this is our first time, and we’ve never been here,” one of them said. The others squashed that idea, so it didn’t go far.

We bought our season pass and parked at the headwaters entrance.

We figured it was safer to put the kids in their swimsuits right away since they always seem to get soaked just “wading” across the headwaters.

I got out and opened the back of the van and started searching for the bag.

Towels and cooler were present but there was no backpack full of swimming gear or a change of clothing. Oh, that really messed up our plans for spending the day in the park!

We headed to the headwaters anyway. “You can’t get soaked,” we said. “Okay,” was the response.

Those that had pants on rolled up the legs and got a little wet, but surprisingly none of them got really wet.

Next we headed to the playground picnic area. It was lunch time, and all of our bellies were starting to rumble. We arrived at the picnic grounds and with all the cars in the lot, I got out to look for an open table – no luck. Okay, we knew that there was at least one other spot with picnic tables – again I took a peek, but every table was full.

So we drove around on Wilderness Drive and ultimately ended up having our picnic in the car on our way out of the park.

We decided to head out for a little geocaching – in Park Rapids – a town we had yet to explore. We found three caches on the way from the park to town (or rather Nikolai did, which became a pattern). The one geocache our smartphone GPS sent us about 15 feet in the wrong direction; I decided to look at a tree that appeared a little rotten in the opposite direction, but to no avail. I gave up and joined the others. After a few more minutes, we were ready to give up when Nikolai went to the spot where I had been and found the geocache in just a few seconds. I gave him a dirty look. He laughed.

He found the next geocache while I was still trying to figure the right direction to go; apparently he didn’t need a GPS again for that find.

Back on the road, we entered the city of Park Rapids and found our way over to the Red Bridge Park.

Again our phones had us going in the wrong direction. We were right at the edge of the water with no place to hide a cache. We were looking around and ready to give up when we heard a voice from across the fence by the apartments.

“It’s over by the door,” yelled a nice man who helped us out. “Thanks,” we said.

With a nose for geocaches this weekend, Nikolai sniffed out the smallest micro geocache yet – it looked about the size of small watch battery. We were in doubt that it was actually a geocache until he unscrewed the cover and pulled out the log sheet. We signed in – yelled our thanks again to the man who helped us – and headed ultimately across the park, but in a roundabout way by the vehicle.

Okay. This time Nikolai stayed in the vehicle; we didn’t want his nose sniffing out another one again. It was someone else’s turn – or so we thought.

The three younger ones and I headed out as Mom and Nikolai waited in the van. After several minutes of searching, we gave up. I sent Marcus to the van. “Mom, we need your help,” he said. The words were barely out of his mouth when Nikolai was on the way.

I had looked all around the area where my phone said it was, but none of us could find it – until Nikolai, the geocache pro, came to our rescue. In just a matter of minutes he located the geocache. This one was the size of a peanut butter jar, craftily hidden under some tree debris.

There were three caches hidden In the same park. We didn’t find the first one, but we are pretty certain that someone unfamiliar with the adventure found it and ruined it, as we found remnants of a possible geocache.

The next one was in the woods a little bit, and we weren’t really dressed for the woods, but we tried anyway. We met another couple looking for a geocache. “We need help,” they said, “We’ve been looking for a while.” Well, it turned out we weren’t much help this time, not even Nikolai could find it. But we will remember something we did find for a long time.

After about five minutes of searching, Alivia started screaming at the top of her lungs. “What in the world is wrong with her?” I asked. Mom was nearby and trying to figure it out. Alivia had found a nest of yellowjackets, and they were punishing her for bothering them. Mom quickly got her out of harm’s way, and then out of the woods, and tried comforting her.

“I want to go home!” she yelled. “I want to go home!” she repeated several times at the top of her lungs.

After she eventually calmed down, mom checked her over carefully. She had several stings on her, but seemed okay. “I never want to go geocaching again,” she said between sobs.

Nikolai and I exited the woods at about the same time, but for some reason he chose the area that Alivia had just vacated, unaware of the reason for her screaming, and so was stung once for that mistake.

It was time to abandon that area. We headed to the store for something to soothe those injuries, and also to abate a burning feeling some of us had acquired, likely from fireweed we had encountered in the woods.

“What if we look for some in-town geocaches,” mom asked Alivia. She agreed.

Being the protective big sister, Abigail said that she would need to go in the woods first because, “I can spot the bees nest, and then we won’t get stung.”

Ultimately, though, we headed toward home, leaving our first geocaching experience in Park Rapids behind.

We headed home on a county road north of Akeley, and this time Nikolai was way off course. It was Abigail who found the last geocache of the day, in a fashion called a “grab and go.”

For the day’s travels, we logged six of nine attempts, with one possibly “muggled” (a non-Geocacher, a person not playing the game, removing the cache). It was ultimately a fun time, even with the bee stings. Of course, I can say that since I wasn’t the one getting stung, and the experience did serve a dual purpose – we found out she wasn’t allergic to bee stings, in an area where we were close to a hospital, if necessary.

Since we started our geocaching adventure in early May, we have now logged 44 caches in all.

On Sunday, we stayed home most of the day, until the heat drove us out.

We headed to town in our air-conditioned vehicle and sought relief in air-conditioned stores. We came home with a few purchases, including a ceiling fan which, after installation, did not yet work. Whether it was the fan or installer error we’ve yet to find out, since after sweating through the installation process we weren’t in a rush to do it all over again.

Please be safe on the lakes – wear your life jacket, keep the kids safe, and remember to take a picture to preserve a lifetime of memories.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week. Be sure to look for the Cass Lake Times float in the Rib Fest parade! For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com