Birthday Party and Exploring

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’ 8th 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 one the night before, but the second one had her stumped. I finally sought help from an online social media site, and after a nudge in the right direction, she solved the puzzle to get us the final coordinates. Then we headed to Bemidji with two nephews and Marcus to see if the puzzles had been solved correctly. After a wrong turn or two, we found the right road for the first puzzle and discovered that it was, indeed, solved correctly (a geocaching friend had already confirmed those coordinates for me, so we were pretty confident on that one). The other puzzle hadn’t been confirmed, but once we arrived in the right location Marcus quickly found the geocache. My niece was proud that her math was again correct, and I was happy to get those two puzzles off my list to solve. With the two geocaches located, we headed back home for lunch, and then the rest of our guests had to leave for home. The house was quiet and the kids weren’t fighting, so – you guessed it – nap time! So I did, and little else was accomplished on Saturday.
We headed out on another trip to explore Minnesota on Sunday afternoon. This time we went northwest of Bemidji toward Pinewood, Debs and Leonard, and even learned that there is a township named Buzzle! We discovered some pretty little lakes, all while geocaching. We climbed a steep hill in search of one cache, and I planned to take a photo of the view after I found it, but a couple of the kids got restless and wanted to help too much, so mom took them back down the steep grade to the van, and I had her take both my camera and phone along. We never did find that cache, and I was mad at myself because I still wanted the scenic photo, but I wasn’t going to climb that hill again just to take it, so I ended up striking out completely on that adventure. 
On a few of Sunday’s geocaches, we were the first to find them in a year – or sometimes two. In the end, we took a leisurely drive around the back roads of Beltrami and Clearwater counties, putting some 100 miles on the van, but thoroughly enjoying the country roads and the new places we discovered. I had hoped to venture over to one puzzle cache that I had solved, but unfortunately the evening’s light ran short. We finally arrived home around 9 p.m. after logging seven hours of exploring the country instead of sitting in front of the television screen. In all, we found 23 caches. There were five we didn’t find, but we are fairly certain that at least two of those were missing.
Please be safe while enjoying your favorite outdoor recreational activity and on the lakes, and remember to take pictures to preserve a lifetime of memories. Remember, school starts next week, so please drive safely and watch out for those buses carrying our children. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com.

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