A Weekend of Memories

 A Weekend of Memories
By Allan Olson

It really was a fun and memorable weekend – for that matter, there were a lot of fun aspects to the whole week. My wife and I celebrated our 14^th anniversary on Wednesday; I had her and the kids ride with me on the paper route – oh, joy! – and that evening I had a meeting, but at least we were all together.

We took our nephew back home on Thursday evening, and no, the stork didn’t cooperate, so a special trip will be needed to see the new baby when that happens. The trip north was quick; we spent more time on the road than anything. Prior to that road trip, we went looking for a recently listed geocache near our home. Marcus made quick work of it, finding the cache before everyone was even out of the van! We were able to claim first-to-find rights on that one.

Friday evening was spent relaxing and not doing much of anything. My mouth was still a little sore from a visit to the dentist, so I didn’t feel like doing much anyway.  I checked my email when we got up on Saturday morning and saw a new geocache was listed in Bemidji (Nymore) area. We didn’t move too fast, because we were getting ready to go to Bagley to go play with the ponies at a friends’ home.

On the way, I convinced my wife that we needed to stop and find that cache; we had a chance at the first-to-find bragging rights there, too. We arrived at the cache location in Nymore Park and started to search... and search... and search. This was supposed to be “a park and grab,” meaning a real easy cache to find, but we weren’t having an easy time of it. We nearly gave up a couple of times. “Are we ready to give up?” Mom asked, one more time. “No,” Alivia said, getting more into serious search mode. A few minutes later, she said, “I found it!” Once again we were outsmarted by the youngest of the bunch. “I already looked there,” Nikolai said. “Not good enough,” was her prompt reply.” My wife and I looked at each other and laughed. Alas, someone had already been there and found it before we had even gotten out of bed – oh, well.

After logging that cache, we continued on to Bagley. After some visiting and lunch, our friend saddled up one of the ponies and all of the kids took turns riding her. Nikolai took her for a ride around the yard himself for the first time, and she decided to teach the rookie cowboy a trick or two. She headed straight for some low hanging branches near the barbed wire fence. Nikolai quickly realized he had two choices – either get gouged by the fence or get knocked off by a branch. He wisely grabbed onto the branch and let the pony keep walking, then lowered himself to the ground, coming away with only a few scratches. Our friend recovered the pony, and he got back on her and rode around again.

The second learning part of the day was watching her give the ponies’ worm medication. We “helped” with what we could, mainly helping with the gates and trying to keep the other ponies out of the way. We didn’t do too badly for a bunch of rookies.

By the time that was done, it was getting late (approaching 5 p.m.) and we were all hot, dusty and tired. It was time to go. Once we were home, we didn’t do much of anything – except my wife did get my cake and our meal ready for Sunday.

Sunday  was Father’s Day and my birthday – a double reason to celebrate! I got to choose, and I wanted to go geocaching for my day. We were going to wake up early and head out, but we didn’t get out of bed until at least 7:30 a.m.; even then, the kids were all still tuckered out from Saturday and still sound asleep. We eventually got it in gear and we were ready to hit the trail around 9:30 a.m. We concentrated our efforts between Cass Lake and Walker, along the bike trail.

I dropped my wife and the girls on one stretch, and the boys and I took the next, and we would be picked up at the end of our one-mile stretch. Apparently the boys and I got the easier part of the trail, since we found all eight of our caches and we had shade (and plenty of mosquitoes) in some areas. The girls said they had no shade, they got attacked by red ants while attempting one cache, and weren’t able to find another. When we got picked up, my wife said we were done with that trail for the day. I agreed, because if I didn’t, nobody was going to enjoy the rest of the day. The next time we venture out on the trail this summer, we will start much earlier so we have cooler morning temperatures. 

We plotted a new course and decided to go east in search of three caches along Six Mile Lake – east and south of Bena. I parked on the side of the road for the first cache and got out to find it with a couple of kids. I scored that one, we exchanged swag items, and headed off in search of the next two.

We missed our turn and took a wrong road while looking for the next cache. We were traveling slowly down a real minimum maintenance road, occasionally clearing big branches out of our path, and ended up at a swamp nearly 2,500 feet – almost a half-mile – from ground zero. Backing up carefully, we inched our way back to the road. The next cache was at the Six Mile Lake boat landing. Alivia made quick work of finding that cache. Dad even found a cool swag item there, taking a 1941 Willy’s Coupe toy car.

We wanted to find the right road to the next cache, but we missed. Finally we did get on the right road – it was a real minimum maintenance road again, and we finally came to where the cache was located a couple hundred feet back in the woods. It took some climbing over the trees and moving brush out of our faces, but ultimately Nikolai made the find. This cache has been in existence since the beginning of geocaching in 2001.

We searched for another cache at the Leech Lake Recreation area, but had no luck with that one. After giving up, we had lunch, then packed up and headed home. Taking full advantage of my day, I took a nap.

That afternoon, we also learned that our new niece was ready to make her appearance. I was hoping she was going to show up on my birthday, but in the end she missed it by about 30 minutes. Now I have nephew born one day before my birthday and a niece one day after – that’s good for me (and family birthday parties)! Welcome to the family, little one.

For supper we had baked chicken, and dessert was homemade German Chocolate Cake – mmm, good! It was an awesome birthday/father’s day weekend.

Thanks for reading, and remember to be safe on the lakes while enjoying the summer. Be sure to spend some time with kids! Thanks for reading, and have a great and safe weekend. For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com