So long, Summer!

So long, Summer!

For the life of us, Abigail and I couldn’t find this thing in downtown Grand Rapids, but after Alivia was on the case she found it in less than 30 seconds – what a fun time!

By Allan Olson

With the kids returning to school across the area this week – it truly does mean that summer is over. No more leisure evenings for the kids. No more extended weekends at the drop of a hat. And, of course, the twining of the summer sun.

For us, Labor Day weekend wasn’t one last hurrah of camping and swimming and biking. In fact, we did none of those. I went to work on Friday – boring! While it seemed that most of the town was off and about, I was at my office. On Saturday morning I went to a photo session with the Gieseke family of Cass Lake (Thanks, everyone!) and then we took off for a weekend of geocaching.

Our first stop was the Ball Club Lake boat access. This was the third time I’ve attempted this cache, and the third time I’ve failed to find it. Later, a geocaching friend shared a photo of what it looks like, so the next time I head east I am going to give it one last try! From there, we ventured off to Cohasset, where we attempted two stops, and both were busts. Man, were we ever off to a lousy start for the day. My wife said, “This town hates us; let’s go!” so we did. 

We moved on to Grand Rapids, which was our ultimate destination for the day. At our first stop, Abigail and I were sent on the search while the rest focused on getting their sandwiches ready. We circled around a bit, and were probably nearly on top of it once, when suddenly my GPS sent me in another direction. Then Abigail said, “I found it!” and we were rewarded by the clank of the ammo can opening. After exchanging some swag items, we took off to our next stop just down the road. At that stop Marcus spotted the cache before I did. Okay, two in a row! Things are looking up. Our next stop was a level-five difficulty cache, and it lived up to its rating. All six of us were scratching our heads, looking around, when my wife finally decided to check something that we had been staring at but not messing with, and “SCORE!” we were rewarded with the find!

Our luck continued as we progressed through the day, and we were able to keep locating the targets we sought. At one stop Abigail and Marcus went with me down a nice wooden walkway in the woods. We were nearly at the location, so I said it was time to start looking. I was running my hand underneath the rail when it bumped into something soft, so I bent down and looked. “Let’s go NOW!” They didn’t even question me as I took off running in the direction we had just come from. When they caught up to me and asked me what the problem was, I told them I had accidentally bumped into a bee’s nest and alerted a few guards to come and check out the situation. I wasn’t going to stick around for them to check me out, and thankfully not many others followed them out, so we avoided any painful encounters.

We stopped in Cohasset one last time to look for another cache, but again we failed to find anything. We decided the geocaches in that town just did not want to be found by us on that day, so they will just have to wait for another weekend when we have a chance to venture in that direction again.

The remainder of our weekend was spent cleaning. We couldn’t get the kids to realize that we were tired of stepping on toys and other stuff in their room, and no, the solution to the problem was not to just “not go in their room” as they suggested. The solution was to CLEAN IT! Well, in the end, dad got tired of arguing, and now there are couple of extra containers of toys (and, of course, LEGOS) in the garage. Apparently even that was not enough, though, as I still found toys in their room on Monday evening.

Looking back, I’d have to say this past summer was probably the most fun we, as a family, have ever had. We went camping three times, we attended naturalist programs at Norway Beach several times (thanks, Mary and Kelly, for some great programs), and we attended a few programs at Lake Bemidji State Park – including one on Ham Radio, which renewed my interest in obtaining a license; now I just need to study more – and a session where they were cooking pizzas with Dutch ovens – oh, so good! I wanted to get to more of the programs, but time just didn’t allow. We will definitely be planning to attend them again next year.

Hopefully, September will provide enough warm weather for everyone to continue to enjoy the great outdoors – and hopefully with fewer bugs along for the ride.

To all the students and teachers – best wishes on another school year!

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 to 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.