Food, Lights and Geocaching

—My girls, Abigail, Alivia and I enjoyed our time at Bentleyville on Friday, Nov. 25.

Food, Lights and Geocaching

By Allan Olson

The long holiday weekend of Thanksgiving was a whirlwind of chaos and hardly a moment of downtime during the entire four day weekend.

The craziness began on Wednesday evening when as soon as I got home that evening, I began the process of making my ever so delicious caramel rolls. I got the dough raising and the kids working on some last minute cleanup before people started showing up. My niece and her daughter showed up to visit and since it’s been many years since I’ve put her to work making rolls – I had her pitch in. So – in reality I delegated and instructed and between Alivia and my nieces I didn’t roll out a single one. I just made the caramel and got the pans ready and monitored the oven so they didn’t burn. In addition to my chaos, my wife was making pies with her great niece – and in the interlude the kids were running all over the house – typical day of chaos in our world.

I finished up with my mess and cleaned up everything but the pans I used, put the rolls away and sent some with my niece for her enjoyment and headed to bed shortly before midnight. More family had arrived in the meantime and some of them decided there were a few supplies we were missing so they headed to the big town for some shopping – I gladly stayed in bed.

Thanksgiving Day, as usual my wife was out of bed early and got things started, I stayed in bed as long as possible, hoping to avoid any cooking/baking/cleaning until it was needed. As I figured I didn’t get to stay in bed too long until my wife asked me to assist her with a few things. We also found out that we needed yet a couple more items from town. Normally I wouldn’t volunteer, but since it was that or cooking, it was an easy decision. I had two of my nieces accompany me on the trek to town and we took a little extra longer time, because we had to find a geocache – a brand new one that had yet be found. We claimed the honors on that, with my niece making the find and we were off again. We did our shopping, got gas, coffee and then found out they needed something else. So we headed off to another store and a few minutes later we headed home. The food and all the guests were in place by 2 p.m. and we dined and some wined. As I promised, I cleaned up and put stuff away and then most of us adults, settled in for some R&R – which might have been a nap for a few of us – too much turkey I guess. My nap was short and about 4 p.m. I started hinting rather strongly that my wife should get the pie ready to eat, soon it was time to enjoy that as well. The rest of the evening was spent visiting and we played a couple games before I headed to bed nice and early about 9:30 p.m. - it felt great.

Friday was another crazy day, my niece had to work and was planning to be back by 3 p.m. and we were heading to Bentleyville, USA –in the big city of Duluth. I spent the morning doing little aside from catching up on some pre-recorded shows from back in October and by 2:30 p.m. I had the vehicle cleaned out; my niece made it back and we were on the road at 3 p.m. sharp. Heading on this adventure were my girls, my niece and her friend. We made it to the big city and stopped for a snack before heading down hill to the big light display. Thankfully, I made the decision to let my niece drive, she handles the city traffic much better than I do and when we arrived the line of cars was backed up a long way. We finally were parked and making our way to the grounds by 6 p.m. – we walked around and enjoyed the lights – not the crowd so much – and still made it out by 7:30 p.m. We made a stop at the big electronic store for me, coffee and hot chocolate, some pizza to go and we were on the road again before 9 p.m. arriving home just after 11:30 p.m. We were tired, but had a great time; most importantly my girls loved it.

Saturday, my plans for geocaching were shifted forward one day, so instead I got caught up on garbage, made a trip into town for a few things, visited my brother at the store and headed back home. I spent the majority of the day working on my new back-up cloud storage for all my photos. I don’t have all the kinks worked out yet, but I’m guessing it’s just operator error as usual.

On Sunday, the only kid I could convince to go with geocaching with me was Abigail, so we left home about 9 a.m. with our destination of finishing a couple segments of the trail. We teamed up with a friend so we could leave vehicles at two different locations and headed out on a walk. We finished our goal about 1:45 p.m. and with not enough time to do anymore, we headed our separate ways. All total, I added 21 caches to my finds bringing our four year total up to 2,100. This year has been slow going, so more weekends will need to be spent on the trail if I want to surpass the last year’s total.

This weekend, plans are looking to be on the road again and I have plans of cleaning a town of geocaches. How those plans align, will remain to be seen.

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. Be safe on the winter roads!