A Spring Weekend

A Spring Weekend
By Allan Olson
Okay, I’ve probably complained enough about the weather lately, but it’s been just plain ridiculous this year, especially in the last two months. We are now halfway through the month of May and there is still ice on many of our area lakes (although a few of the smaller ones did give up their ice covers over the weekend).
Our plans for last weekend were pretty mild, even though we did have company. On Friday evening my older brother and family arrived for that night and the next day – he had to work on Sunday. We celebrated their new purchase of another Sears store, making this the second of his career. Since this one is in Bemidji, I’m sure that we will be seeing more of them than normal, at least for the first few months. We stayed up until nearly midnight (that’s late for us!) visiting and having a good time.

On Saturday morning, my brother needed to conduct some business in town, so I played with a toy he brought along for me to use – a lawn sweeper. First of all, let me say – I never want to pick up a rake again, after trying out this handy little unit! You can forget about sore hands and shoulders from raking all day. This thing is awesome! I sat on the mower for about two hours, raking my yard – it worked splendid – except for a couple minor little things which, per usual, turned out to be operator error. Alivia joined me on the mower for at least half of that time, and we traveled the yard together, collecting leaves. At one point, I was trying to dump it and I couldn’t pull the rope hard enough. “You need to get off for a minute,” I told her. Alivia climbed off the mower and quickly realized what the problem was – dad needed some help. She ran around behind the sweeper and pushed the basket over, and just like that it was empty, thanks to a smart little five-year-old.
The previous night had also been spent on the mower – I was dragging my driveway, still trying to level it out from the mess of the muddy driveway from last month. Alivia accompanied me on the mower for that task as well.
After I finished “raking the lawn” on Saturday I was a bit chilled (that wind was cold!) so I heated some water up and made two glasses of hot chocolate before I started to warm up. The kids played outside some on Saturday, but they decided it was a too chilly to hang outdoors – especially for May.
That afternoon, when my brother got back we loaded up the kids and went out in search of a few nearby geocaches. The first one took over 20 minutes, and we finally gave up – no luck. We searched high and low and far and wide, and still couldn’t find it. We moved on to a different cache farther down the road, and I located it after a brief search. I pointed it out to my lawn mower partner, Alivia, to let her claim the find.
The next two caches went fairly quickly, and before we knew it, it was time for our company to head home.
On Sunday morning my wife and kids and I went back to the cache that had stumped us the night before, and again searched and searched. Finally, after nearly 30 minutes, I relented and called the cache owner. Thankfully, she was at home, nearby, and showed us how to retrieve the cache. We were in the right spot, just not using the right technique! We did get to claim first-to-find status, and signed the log.
Our plans for this weekend include a brief road trip to International Falls for a family event. Who knows, maybe we will even find time for a geocache or two on the trip. By the way – we also hid our sixth cache in downtown Cass Lake.
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

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