A Weekend of Fun

Finding a geocache can often be frustrating due to the coordinates or how well they are hidden, but times like this make an easy cache even more fun when you have kids like this to help you out!

A Weekend of Fun

By Allan Olson

What a beautiful weekend, if everyone didn’t take advantage of this last weekend’s weather – then you are just out of luck because we probably won’t see another weekend that nice until May.

So for our weekend of fun activities we kicked Friday night off by getting groceries and buying Nikolai a pair of shoes. I’m so tired of the kids shoes being destroyed before they even look they have been used.  I think we bought his last pair of shoes just prior to the end of the last school year – and if he wore them 10 times this summer I would be surprised. If we let them wear the shoes geocaching or playing in the woods than I wouldn’t be so surprised – anyway we picked him up a pair from a different store and we hope that these will last a little longer.

For supper I tossed some pork chops on the grill and then I was in a hurry for my next appointment and forgot to shut the gas off on the grill – and of course someone bumped or possibly messed with one of the knobs and left my gas turned on and now I’m out of propane again – frustrating!

Saturday – it was gorgeous, extremely nice outside and we came back to Cass Lake to work on our family pictures. My wife wanted to try something out of the normal for us – using urban settings as backgrounds instead of the woods and trees. The kids were as un-cooperative as usual and I’ve been informed that we shot a few hundred frames trying to get some good shots that we will both agree on. Of course I was also un-cooperative – or so I was told by my wife as I wasn’t getting the urban look that she wanted.  Oh the joys. A photographer mentor told me years ago when I borrowed his studio to take some family photos that taking photos of your own family is very hard – this year I was reminded of that more than ever. In the end I believe we have at least one of each child that we like and possibly one of all four of them that we might agree on – but it’s very likely that we will re-take it. My wife and I have a couple photos together also and we are still on disagreement on those – I like a couple and she doesn’t much care for any of them.

Okay with a few hours spent on family photos it was time to do some geocaching – I had a segment of trail I wanted to finish from North Plantagenet to Carr Lake Road – except I was hoping that we could save some walking and drive in part way along the road that leads to the Beltrami County dump grounds – but the gates were closed. In the end Marcus, Abigail, Alivia and I walked 2.1 miles and found 12 geocaches including a level 4 terrain that was hidden by the local legendary Fargnot. The kids and I had fun and we even saw a little pond of water that I never knew existed because it can’t be seen from the highway.

Sunday morning – my wife had located one more rabbit – this one for Alivia, it was what she was looking for, except it was in Effie, Mn and we could only get it on Sunday and between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. That meant things had to be planned rather precisely.  We plotted out the map in driving time and miles and because I wanted to add an extra 50 miles one way to find Minnesota’s Oldest Geocache we had to leave extra early to get that one prior to getting the bunny. So we had to leave by 6 a.m. I think we both knew that wasn’t going to happen but we were on the road by 6:15 a.m. and a goal to be home by 5 p.m.  We stopped in Grand Rapids to fill the tank and soon we en-route to our destination our first geocache find of the day was at the Welcome to Hibbing sign – then we skipped a large amount of caches in between before finally stopping again near our intended target. We then found the oldest geocache at about 10 a.m. took some photos and moved on to go get Alivia’s bunny. In terms of miles – it should’ve only taken about an hour to get to our location but that road between Orr and Effie was full of turns and twists of the like that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in Minnesota so it took about 90 minutes. However we made it and Alivia picked out a bunny that she liked and we hit the road again. Our next stop was in Big Fork – to find a geocache and luckily enough it was a spot to have a picnic as well – so we made sandwiches and looked at the exhibits.

We continue on the road towards Grand Rapids – since there were more geocaches in that direction than any other route home and several after several stops later we finally made it back home about 45 minutes later than I had planned – which wasn’t too bad.

Supper was on in the crock pot and after supper it was time for the kids to head to bed and by 10 p.m. I was ready to hit the sack as well, after all I had stories I was expected to get in the paper this week.

In all, even though the kids get very frustrating in the vehicle we all still had a good day.

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.