Fall weekend adventures

Fall weekend adventures

By Allan Olson

Where to begin on this weekend’s activities? It was all such a blur of fun; it’s hard to remember it all!

Friday night was the quietest. Even though momma was away, daddy still fed the kids and made them work on cleaning their rooms – a most dreaded task for any child. While they did that, I made a pumpkin cake and enjoyed listening to a football game.

My brother arrived with his three kids on Saturday morning, and from that point on everything was all in fast forward. The kids all immediately jumped on their bikes and started riding like the wind. They decided to take one break, hiding in the house to look at the computer or television. We fixed that problem in short order by kicking them back out of the house – so they biked some more.

I decided that we should go for a couple geocaches – the weather was perfect! My brother was game, so we fed the kids and headed for the woods. There were a couple of caches I had wanted to try for some time, but we knew we had to wait until things were bug-free in order to complete the find. They were less than five miles from the house, down a forest road along Big Lake. The first cache was easy; we practically drove right to it, and I spotted it right away. The second required some extensive walking – not necessarily in miles, but in terrain. The cache description said “some bushwhacking required – not recommended for young children.” I ignored that advice and we proceeded on our search for it with seven kids, two dads and Bob, the dog.

I’m not sure what was the most fun for the kids on this search – walking the dog, climbing over the fallen trees (including some large ones that likely were victim to this summer’s windstorm), walking along the beach (which really existed only because of the lack of precipitation) or making the find.

On our trek to the cache we climbed over and around trees and bushes, then found ourselves in a swampy area that was still holding on to its moisture and quickly re-routed the rest of the crew before they got into the mossy swamp grass.

On the way back, Alivia managed to get both her shoes soaking wet. I’m surprised that she was the only one. My nephew Alex did have the misfortune of finding a mud hole and also returned with wet and muddy shoes.

We were back home about two hours after we left, and added four neighbor kids to our group of seven kids already. We started playing games in the backyard with a Frisbee, which then evolved into hitting a ball, too, when a plastic ball was thrown into the mix. However, a short while later we discovered that a plastic Frisbee hitting a plastic ball too many times results in a broken Frisbee. That game then ultimately evolved into dodge ball, with as many as 13 people playing at one time. Some of the others also took breaks from playing and helped to rake up a large pile of leaves for jumping and being covered up with. After dodge ball, the neighbors returned home, and all seven of our kids got involved in making the leaf pile bigger, right up until dark.

That evening we dined on a fine meal of tube steaks and brats, and it wasn’t long before kids started crashing. By shortly after 9 p.m. all the kids were ready for bed, and the dads weren’t far behind.

Sunday morning found us in Cass Lake for the Lions Pancake Breakfast. Then we took a drive down the Pike Bay Loop Road where, upon the suggestion of my nephew Trevor, we looked for a few geocaches. The first one we found was along the Mi Gi Zi Trail. It was literally inside a rock – someone took the time to drill a hole through the center of a rock! In all, we found four that day and six over the weekend, so to date we’ve logged 192 geocaches. (I’m thinking it’s time to hide another one.)

That afternoon my brother and I took turns at the clay pigeons he brought down. I drew a bead on the target and nailed it with my first shot – and then missed the next few in a row. We ultimately ran out of shells before targets, finishing up two boxes of shells and most of a box of targets. We never did get a chance to take out the .22’s.

When the moms got home, it was soon time for the cousins to hit the road. In all, it was an excellent, but tiring, weekend. This weekend figures to be a long one, with the kids home for four days. Hopefully we’ll survive. They have been informed that their rooms need to be cleaned before they get television or computer during this mini-vacation and while they’ve all agreed to that – we expect it’s likely to be a battle.

During the cool fall days, taking a walk in the woods is always a good option, so bring a kid to teach, and if you bring a gun, please remember this simple rule: “Be sure of your target – and beyond.” Thanks for reading, and have a great week.