A Major Milestone Achieved

A Major Milestone Achieved

My kids and my niece celebrated the achievement of

finding our 2,000 geocache on Sunday, October 16. This

particular cache, located in Polk County, was last found

in 2012 . It certainly wasn’t easy to find this many caches,

but we did it!

By Allan Olson

Our geocaching explorations have been very few and far between this summer but this last weekend, I had a goal in mind and that was reaching 2,000 finds. On Saturday we had 22 left to accomplish this number and I knew that was too many to leave for Sunday and I really needed to get out and find some to narrow down that number.

Saturday morning after a nice breakfast of pancakes prepared by my wife and niece, I mentioned that I would like to go out and find some geocaches sometime today. As great as my idea was in my mind, my wife had other plans –cleaning. I have my share of pet peeves when it comes to cleaning and dirty dishes is one of them – but if I want to go play I can ignore a few things. However, I knew she was right and so the cleaning process began. I got one kid on dishes and the others on their bedrooms and the downstairs living room. I started tackling the kitchen floors – figuring I better pull my weight if I want to go out and have some fun too – considering pretty much every weekend for the next month is going to be busy and then it’s Thanksgiving followed shortly by Christmas. So I buckled down and started the sweeping process which was eventually followed by mopping. I moved from the kitchen to the upstairs living room and repeated the same process taking about a 30 minute break to finish my book. I finished the upstairs and then started on the messy entryway –where everything seems to end up from all over the house. I hadn’t got very far on this when I ended up enlisting the aid of my wife to help sort through the 10,000 coats and shoes that were taking up space. Abigail also helped in this process informing me who’s shoes were belonged to whom and if they fit or not or if they can be disposed of. She also didn’t help by bringing up the winter boots – which I didn’t want yet. I did ask her to put them back but in the chaos of things, they are still on the stairs waiting to go back until they are actually needed - not anytime soon is fine with me.

I finally finished my part of the chores and decided I had enough – it was still nice outside – the kids were outside I wanted to go find some geocaches. My wife didn’t want me going alone – afraid I might get lost or fall out of a tree or something I don’t know – the kids didn’t want to go with, my niece was at work so my wife decided that she would go with. The kids were fine with that, they got their electronics back and my parents were going to be there also. So we headed out in search of some geocaches – but first we had to go shoe shopping. Some of the shoes that were disposed of belonged to my wife and they were her outside boots. So of course they had to replaced. We finally got out of the stores and had only a couple hours of daylight left so we headed out. We drove south of Bemidji and ended up in the rural areas of Beltrami and Hubbard Counties discovering three lakes we didn’t know existed and ended the evening with seven finds the final at the Schoolcraft Townhall and one we didn’t find and is likely missing.

We finished our geocaching for the evening grabbed a few grocery supplies for supper and the week and headed home. We spent the rest of the evening visiting with my parents and my brother.

Sunday morning, I made sausage and my wife made the eggs to go with to feed the hungry people in the house. The guests left for their destinations and I started prepping for ours but first I had to get Abigail loading the dishwasher. I got the cooler packed and started to get it out the door and handed that job off to Nikolai. We finally got out the door around 10:30 a.m. and headed west for our destination –but first we had to go shoe shopping. Marcus had just recently got new shoes – but the reason why was because he had played outside in his shoes – including geocaching and destroyed the old pair. Nikolai had shoes that had a small hole in them and no boots for outside in the woods – so if we were going to go for broke we needed to get it done and over with and we did.

So Saturday I tossed several shoes and on Saturday and Sunday we purchased new shoes – a never ending battle with a family.

Finally armed with coffee and food for the trip we headed out our first stop was in Bagley, well our first several stops were in Bagley – my niece solved some puzzles which revealed the final locations of a few caches that we hadn’t had before. Our ultimate travels Sunday took us north of Gonvick and about as far west as Fosston and areas in between. We found the first cache of the day at 12:18 p.m. and our last one at 5:38 p.m. - #2,001. We finally got home around 7:30 that evening, just in time to dodge the thundershowers and in time for the kids to shower and get to bed.

Some might ask what the thrill of this is and I’m not honestly sure I can answer it in a way that someone would really understand. For me – it’s about the journey and the locations it takes us too. I’ve spent more time in the backroads of Beltrami, Cass, Hubbard, Clearwater, Polk in the last four years than I would’ve thought possible. Another important aspect of this is going out with my family, they don’t enjoy to the same level as I do anymore, but when we are out doing it, we have lots of fun as a family – even with the crabby moments that occur when you put seven people and one dog in a vehicle.

This weekend, - plans are to go east to visit my cousin, the following Saturday – I’m heading out with Nikolai and another friend to a big geocaching event in the metro and that weekend will be followed up with deer season – the best part of fall.

Please remember to watch out for the buses that are carrying our most precious cargo. Also snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit.