Adventures in the woods

Adventures in the woods ...

By Allan Olson

It was another fun-filled weekend for this family. We accomplished not only some work around the place, but also had loads of fun this past weekend.

Saturday morning a couple of the kids and I used the wagons and some of the dirt from the old garden spot to fill the holes in the yard that the puppy had dug. It was a job that had been put off for too long.

That evening, after the fishing tournament weigh in, I met the rest of the family at the Harlem Ambassadors basketball game in Cass Lake to watch a very entertaining game of buckets.

On Sunday morning I asked my wife what she wanted to do ... her reply was “I want to go geocaching.”

Okay, I thought. I kind of wanted to as well, but I also was thinking of staying around the house and being lazy. But geocaching sounded like it would be more fun.

Before we ventured out on our trip, my wife informed me that I wasn’t going to get to pick the geocaches, that we weren’t going to be out all day, and that we will not be trying to break any personal records. Okay, fine. I could agree to those terms.

Our first stop was not too far from our home at Benjamin Lake, which is located toward Blackduck. We had tried to locate the geocache there before but the bugs prevailed. They were more dedicated to driving us out than we were to our search. This time we prevailed – well, at least Abigail did. My wife and I were searching an area where we thought it should be and it wasn’t. After a short while we heard Abigail say, “I found it.”

We looked at her, disbelieving at first. She had indeed located the cache. It was in a crevice in a tree and it was indeed an ammo can – one of which we hadn’t ever seen before. The hint for the cache made sense after we located it – “Oh baby! It really is an ammo can.” It was a baby sized ammo can, but we made the find.

The next stop was at “Room with a View” – a fire tower. While still on the ground, I had an idea where the geocache and, since I was right, I could’ve skipped the climb. We headed up the tower with Nikolai in the lead, followed by mom and the next three children, and, finally, dad bringing up the rear. Every landing we made it to marked a victory of sorts, but, by the time we reached to top, my legs were screaming “stop the madness, stop the madness.”

We reached the summit and my wife said, “Now where?”

“What about that string hanging out of the pipe?” I said. With that, we found the second geocache of the day.Thankfully we didn’t drop it and have to make the climb all over again. I took a picture of mom and the kids at the top and we headed back down. A much easier task than going up!

The next stop found us down on a ski trail, which was a long hike down and then a long hike into the woods. We searched high and low – underneath tree stumps, in trees, everywhere we could think of – but we didn’t make the find. So, we gave up and my wife led us out of the woods – a different way. Being a skeptic, I was wondering if we were going to be like Moses in the Bible wandering for 40 years. But she used the GPS map and got us out of the woods. In this case, thankfully it was dry as our trek entailed walking through a (dried) swamp bed.

At that point we had already surpassed our two-hour limit so mom suggested we head into Blackduck for some sandwich making materials and keep on seeking.

In town we found the geocaches located near the “Welcome to Blackduck” signs. On one in particular, we had given up and were all back in the van when mom said, “What about over there?” and pointed to a spot other geocachers had referenced. We sent Nikolai out and he spotted it within seconds. I’m fairly certain that I had walked by that same spot and never noticed it.

We located a few more in the city area before we ventured toward home in hopes of nabbing a few more geocaches along the way. So we traveled yet down another new road towards a town hall.

The kids and I went out while mom decided to sit this one out. We found a trail, ventured way off course, and circled around in the woods before finally finding a more suitable walking environment. We were soon hot on the trail of the geocache. We were within feet of Ground Zero when we had a choice of either going down a pit or staying on high ground. I sent Nikolai down and the distance kept getting smaller so we all headed into the pit – even though my gut instinct said it wasn’t there. Soon the GPS jumped up in and signalled us back to Ground Zero. I looked back up, climbed the hill, and shook my head. My gut instinct was right. I sent Marcus up the hill to get the geocache out of the stump concealing it.

In the meantime Mom had joined us. She was probably thinking we had gotten lost. In the end we found a much easier path to get back to the van.

Our next stop was once again on a narrow remote trail. We were supposed to be able to drive almost up to the cache location. I did attemp to but, in the end, decided it was safer for my vehicle if we walked. Ultimately, this was another geocache we were unable to find. Maybe because of the dense foliage which may have caused our GPS signal to bounce around. Regardless, we gave it up. We got back to the vehicle and mom said, “We’re done.”

Okay, I could agree with that.

We arrived back home nearly six hours after we left – never traveling much more than 30 miles from the house! In all, we found 10 geocaches out of the 12 we attempted.

This weekend it sounds like it will be more of the same except with some help from more family – it should be great!

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. School has started – so please watch out for those buses that are transporting our precious cargo.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week! For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com.