"My Crazy Kids"

Birthday Party and Exploring We kicked the kids and the dog out of the van enroute to a geocache and just let them run. The beauty of this little dirt road in the middle of nowhere was greatly enjoyed by all. By Allan Olson My wife and I now officially have two eight-year-old children in the house. Scary! Although I’m not sure what’s more scary – just having two kids the same age, the fact that they haven’t sent us packing yet, or that them being eight means my age is increasing, too. Regardless, I guess we’ll just tackle each battle as it comes and deal with it. We entertained family and one little friend of Abigail’s for the twins’ 8 th birthday party on Friday afternoon. We played a couple games of cards that evening after some of the family headed home, but we were all too tired to continue much past 10, and so headed to bed. On Saturday morning my niece was determined to solve a couple of puzzles related to math and geocaching. She was able to solve ...

NorthStar Geoseekers host rally in Park Rapids At least 73 geocachers from all across Minnesota and other states joined in the fun of a geocaching weekend at the East 40 hosted by NorthStar Geoseekers. Photo by Allan Olson.  By Allan Olson A large group of geocachers enjoyed three days of fun focused on their favorite pastime on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, August 15-17, at the Park Rapids Tractor Club grounds, known locally as the East 40. The local geocaching group – the Northstar Geoseekers – reserved the campground and facilities for a weekend fun all revolving around the activity of geocaching. For the uninformed, geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices (even a smartphone will work). Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates, and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. The weekend featured five events – a campfire event Friday night, the main event Saturday...

Geocaching  Fun It was a fun and exhausting weekend spent camping and visiting – but I’m already looking forward to next year’s event! By Allan Olson If there was ever any doubt, this past weekend confirmed that there are lots of crazy people out there, just like us – that is to say, crazy about geocaching! We were part of the large crowd of geocachers who attended the 2 nd Annual Northstar Geoseekers Event in Park Rapids over the three-day weekend – and it was a blast! Late Friday afternoon, we reached our camping destination at the Tractor Club grounds on the east side of town (known locally as the East 40). We set up camp and then headed over to the potluck dinner, while the kids headed off to play. We visited with some people we had met before, and talked with others who were new to us. That evening, after I sent the youngest three to bed, Nikolai and I grabbed our flashlights and headed out with a large group of others in search of two night ca...

A quiet summer weekend Cut: This daughter of mine, for no reason whatsoever, decided to spray me with her water “gun” at Smokey Bear’s birthday party. And if you believe that, don’t bother to read the rest of this story! By Allan Olson Another week of summer has flown by, and with it another weekend. Before we know it, that “s” word will be back in the forecast (sorry!). Our weather lately has been really nice, and it was a good weekend to get outdoors, but we didn’t, really. Our past weekend was pretty laid back, overall. We didn’t do much of anything on Friday evening. I mowed the lawn and we enjoyed supper outside at the table. After that I did some reading outside, and then I played a game of Sequence with Alivia. Marcus and I started another game, but then the comfy breeze died down and the state birds started attacking us. Game over – they win.   On Saturday the kids and I attended Smokey the Bear’s 70 th birthday party at Norway Beach. I think...

Family Vacation 2014 The tour guide at the Forestville Caves kindly agreed to take a photo of our group during the tour. In the background was what appeared to be a shallow pool of water, but we were informed that it was actually about 10 feet deep. By Allan Olson It has been a full year since our last dual family vacation, when my brother and his family joined us on a trip to the Black Hills, where we spent a full six days traipsing across the Dakotas and Wyoming enjoying all the beauty that area had to offer. We had no such grand plans this year, and instead took a much simpler vacation to southern Minnesota, where we visited a Minnesota state park. We made our reservations for this four-day getaway sometime back in February or March. The park, Myer Big Island State Park near Albert Lea, came highly recommended as a nice place to stay, so we booked it! The big day finally arrived. My brother and his family had arrived on Wednesday evening, so all was set ...