Father and Son fun

Marcus and I are together at the only geocache I managed to find on the extensive trail system in Huntersville this weekend. The outdoor recreation was a blast but very tiring. 

Father and Son fun

By Allan Olson

On Saturday morning Marcus and I headed out early we had to be in Park Rapids for the geocachers bi-annual ditch picking event. We met with a large group of people just south of town and started visiting before we headed out gathering garbage.

With the large group of people picking up ditches including some young kids who didn’t mind the running it took only an hour to get the two mile stretch done about half the time it was expected to take. We visited some more and headed back to Park Rapids one of our group needed to pick up someone else and there just happened to be a geocache nearby that several of us needed to get yet, from there we headed to the deep forest of Huntersville.

For those who haven’t been geocaching most geocaches are within a small margin of error from where the coordinates report ground zero and no GPS or smartphone will give the exact same reading as the next person but they will both be similar. These caches were well outside of the margin of error – reports of this cache owner chucking his containers out of a moving vehicle proved to be fairly accurate as they were usually 60-75 feet off and often in the opposite direction of the coordinates. However, with a group of 15-20 geocachers searching for these containers we had a 97% success rate finding 33 of the 36 attempted personally I only managed to find one of the containers.

Marcus trudged along the whole time sometimes actively searching for the cache and others times towards the end sitting in the middle of the road drawing in the dirt while others searched for the cache and sometimes he would be playing with the other kids along for the day’s hike in the woods.

Finally nearing 7 p.m. we parted ways with the few members left in the group and headed back towards home. On the way home Marcus asked if we could do just one more with just us – how could I say no? We headed into Park Rapids and located a cache named Rescue Heroes at the local police station, signed the log, headed to the store and ultimately made it home about 9:30 p.m. In all we got to claim a total of 39 caches that day our single biggest day ever. On the way home I had to fight my urge to pull over along the bike trail and just get one or perhaps two more.

On Sunday I figured out we had walked approximately eight miles that day between the mile we walked picking ditches and all the time on the trails in the woods. No wonder I didn’t crawl out of bed until nearly 8:30 a.m. nearly three hours later than my normal rousing time. My legs were sore but in all I didn’t feel too bad.  Marcus didn’t complain about being sore at all – just tired and he decided to take an afternoon nap and so did I.

Later I asked Marcus if he was ready? “for what,? he said, I told him to go do some more geocaching. “Don’t even think about it dad,” he said. However, later that day, I was looking at a large series of caches in the Badura forest area and he asked if we were going to do those soon.

Aside from resting, most of Sunday was spent catching up on laundry again – the never ending battle.

Ultimately this past week we managed to log 42 caches which after nearly two years of geocaching puts us only 16 caches from 700.

The greatest part of the weekend was getting to spend time with one of my kids out in the great outdoors and not in front of the screen. It was also fun to meet new people all enjoying the same hobby.

The plans for this weekend – while they might involve finding a cache or two it’s not likely that we will be going on any large caching streaks. Although with our two year anniversary coming up on Monday it would be fun to hit that 700 mark.

Please be safe while enjoying some outdoor recreation, and remember to take pictures to preserve a lifetime of memories. Also, please watch out for the buses that are transporting our children, and remember to drive safely. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com.