Road Trip – early spring adventure

Road Trip – early spring adventure

By Allan Olson

We took another one-day road trip on Sunday, heading over to Thief River Falls – this time for the girls to attend a baby shower. The young girls were excited; they had been asking all week how many days until the baby shower (sometimes they got confused and said bridal shower). I think they were just excited about getting some “girl time.”

For us boys, it just meant some more time to get outside and play in the snow – geocaching! Thankfully, this weekend was much warmer than last - just in regular temperature about 30 degrees warmer! Another bonus was the roads were much, much better, too.

We left home shortly after 11 a.m. on Sunday and arrived at our destination with plenty of time to spare – even enough time for the whole gang to go on one geocache run – even if I was the only one to get out of the vehicle. We dropped the ladies off at their party headquarters a little before 2 p.m., and proceeded onward to the next geocache.

This navigation process was a little more difficult, with Nikolai trying to direct me by distance only – 100, 90, 150, oops! We went too far, and had to turn around and try again. Sometimes I got frustrated and pulled over to read my phone, trying to remember the streets and nearby locations that would get me close to the cache; then Nikolai could direct me by distance. The majority of the caches we found were pretty easy to find, but not always easy to extract.

At one cache the treasure was hiding inside a parking lot lamp post, and by reading other logs I figured that this would require a little digging. The last person to find it earlier in the month noted that they were able to lift the cover and get it out – but that was before the last foot of snow was dumped on us. The boys tried digging with their hands, then looked for small items in the van to dig with. I started digging in the back of the van for the tire wrench. Once I had it in my hands, the little digging we had to do went much faster. The cache was located, signed and replaced and will likely be much easier for the next person, as this snow is finally starting to recede.

In all, we found seven caches in less than two hours, and made attempts at three others. At one, we were supposedly two feet from ground zero, but aside from lots of snow the only thing around was a tiny sapling less than knee high and smaller than my pinky in diameter. After reading some of the previous entries, I learned that it was in a rock pile. I informed the boys that search was over; this is not a winter cache to be looking for with four feet of snow on the ground.

The next one that eluded us we thought was on the street front of a store, but I couldn’t ever get the coordinates to lock. In my mind, I knew something wasn’t right, so when I got home that evening I read some of the logs and found out that there was an alley that was not visible from the front where it was hidden – so that one will be saved for another day.

We were on our last cache at a city park when we were informed that the party was over, and we could pick the girls up any time. We were just attempting to locate another cache and, lucky for us, Nikolai unburied it in the snow. We signed the log and headed off to pick up the girls for the trip home.

We did stop for one more cache on the way home (in Erskine), but either it was buried in the snow or we were just in the wrong spot, because were unable to “cache in” on it.

On Saturday, we went to pick up Bob at the vet’s clinic, where he had surgery on Friday. Originally we hoped to pick him up on Friday, but that didn’t happen. The kids were very worried about their crazy puppy. One of the girls – I think it was Alivia – said she couldn’t sleep all night because she was worried about Bob. The other kids all expressed their concern about their puppy, and were eagerly awaiting the time to get him. When we picked him up, he was excited to ditch that place and go back home with his kids. I have to admit, mom and I were happy to pick him up, too. Bob is also happy to be back at home in his big room, as opposed to the small cage at the clinic – plus having four crazy kids to love him up.

Our plans for this weekend are still not finalized, but it’s a safe bet we will end up leaving for at least Easter dinner with family. Thankfully, the winter weather is making its way out of here and the spring sun is melting the snow, so it should be a nice warm weekend! Who knows, maybe we can find another cache or two while we are out and about.

Thanks for reading, and remember to watch out for school buses on the roads; they are carrying a precious cargo – our children. Also please exercise caution when venturing out on the lakes. Thanks for reading, and have a great and safe weekend. For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com.