A warm geocaching weekend


A warm geocaching weekend


By Allan Olson


With the weather in the 50s, it was hard to stay indoors on Sunday – so we didn’t! After all, winter is knocking on the door, and it could soon be -50, and nobody wants to be outside in that!

To kick things off, the two boys both got sick. The old­est was first; it was at about 2 a.m. on Friday when he woke me up, so I went to clean the mess – likely my least favor­ite thing in the world. I would rather field dress a deer than deal with vomit. The next son came to us at about 4 a.m., shortly after I had fallen back asleep. “I’m sick,” he said. “Did you make a mess?” I asked. “No,” he said. “So you made it to the bathroom?” “Yes,” he said. “Good – go to the other room and sleep, and get a bucket.” He left the room and I rolled over and went back to sleep. After all, the alarm would be going off in less than two hours. Thankfully, by Friday eve­ning all the kids were feeling much better. On Saturday we spent the morning cleaning to get ready for all the company that’s coming this week for Thanksgiving. Late that af­ternoon, we finally headed off to Bemidji in search of those geocaches I wanted to locate. We got to our location and our gps was “wonky” on the phones. We were in the middle of town, and it didn’t make sense. The girls weren’t cooperating, so mom took them back to the van while the boys and I went to search for another cache inside the park. We searched high and low and never did find it. Meanwhile, the girls settled down, so mom took them back in search of the first cache and said, “Go look over there in the trees,” and lo and behold, Abigail quickly made the find. Soon it would be getting dark, and we needed to hit the stores and head for home. 
That evening, at about 9 p.m., my phone started going crazy. I was getting flooded with emails. I checked the phone and found that there was new listing of geocach­es, all near Cass Lake, along the Heartland Trail. There were 16 new caches in all. I showed my wife, who was looking at me like I might fly out the door after them right that instant, or wake everybody up at some insane hour to go after them. Instead, we lazed around on Sunday morning, did some more cleaning, and finally headed out the door at about 10:15. Right before we left, my phone went off again – it was another set of 16 more geocaches, all in the same area. About the time we got into Cass Lake, I got two more emails. All together this weekend, there were 42 new geocaches placed along the trail in the Cass Lake area.
Since we were only three caches away from 200, we devised a plan. I would drop mom and two of the kids off at one spot, and I would take the other two and Bob (the dog) and go down the road to the next intersection and meet up for the #200. This meant that we had to skip at least one until on the way back so we could all be together for a picture. It turned out that Marcus was able to find our 200th geocache, and as a group we got to claim “first to find” rights on it as well. In case you wondered, we were kinda excited.
In all, we found seven that afternoon, and we were only gone for a couple hours, since there was work to be done at home. That means we still have at least 34 left to find, since the kids and I located one on Monday morning be­fore school. In addition to that, we know there’s a bunch along the Pike Bay Loop that haven’t been found in some time, and I want to see if they still exist or if the storm last summer blew them all away.
Our geocaching fun was celebrated even more Sun­day night when a family found our geocaches hiding up north. Our two geocaches were the first that family has ever found and the log note said “We’re hooked.
My plans to go hunting one more time this year were “shot” when the kids got sick on Friday; my desire to re-pack all of my stuff had dis­sipated on Thursday evening anyway when I started think­ing about getting ready. It all worked out okay in the end, as we spent time together do­ing things as a family.
We should have lots of fun this coming week, gorging ourselves with turkey and ham and all the fixings – es­pecially pumpkin pie – pro­vided the control panel on our oven doesn’t go out like it did on Thanksgiving day last year.



As always, watch out for school buses on the roads, as they are carrying a precious cargo – our children. Thanks for reading, and have a great and safe Thanksgiving weekend.

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