Weekend Road Trip

Weekend Road Trip

A tired young man (Nikolai) and his dog slept during the long car ride from up north to home on Sunday, Dec. 4. – Photo by Allan Olson.

By Allan Olson
I think “weekend road trip” is going to be a common theme for the rest of the month – there isn’t a weekend that I won’t be traveling from now until New Year’s. This past weekend was a quick blast of fun and exhaustion all rolled into one. 
We left home at about noon on Saturday and returned at around 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. Our first destination was the big town of Baudette, where we stopped and picked up my mother-in-law, then headed out east of town to visit her dad (my wife’s grandpa) for a couple hours. Since he has opted to remain in Minnesota, we have had the opportunity to see him more this year than most – his normal home in Colorado is just a little too far away for casual visits. 
This was an unusually quiet visit. Visits to Grandpa’s in the past have typically been centered around a family gathering of some sort – that usually involve upwards of 100 people.
After our visit, we left the cabin and headed back to town to return my mother-in-law to her dwelling. Then we headed out to see my parents. We arrived in plenty of time for a supper of fresh venison steak and fried potatoes. I just couldn’t possibly get enough. The kids helped their Grandma with the clean-up and dishes, while the rest of us dispersed. We visited, watched some tube, and eventually headed off to bed.
The next morning I heard the kids buzzing early and ignored them until I couldn’t stay in bed any longer. We enjoyed some breakfast and then departed. The big plan for the weekend was to decorate cookies at my sister-in-law’s. 
Let me qualify that statement. That was the plan for my wife and kids. There’s no way I was going to sit around in a small place and go stir crazy waiting for them to finish that project. Instead, I went geocaching.
For the last couple years, I’ve been trying to get back to the Warroad area to finish up the geocaches there, and I decided to use this day as an opportunity to get a crack at it. So off I went, all by myself. Well almost – I took the dog with me. If I had stuck to my original line of thought – getting to Warroad and just getting those in town and leaving the outlying areas for another time, I might have been able to grab more than I did. 
I cruised around the area in and out of town for just over three hours and only managed to get 24 caches. I really needed another two or three more hours just to finish up the remaining 25 caches in town. In all, it was a nice, quiet afternoon – something I don’t get often. It would have been better if my wife was along with me – not only for the company, but for the navigating, too. 
It is quiet frowned upon (and unsafe) to be looking at one’s phone while driving, so at every stop I exported my next stop to Google maps – not always the most user-friendly way to get to multiple stops around the town.  Regardless, I made a dent in the ones available there, and I’m not sure when the opportunity will allow me to go again.
I got back to my family at 2 p.m., and at 3 p.m. we were back at my folks’ place to attend a birthday party for my niece. We hadn’t really planned on that, since our weekend was booked prior to this event being scheduled, but we made a quick appearance, said “Happy Birthday” in person to the young lady, enjoyed some cake, and then headed for home.
We arrived aback at our snow castle in the woods just after dark. It’s quite possible that everybody was in tucked bed and maybe even sleeping by 9 p.m. that night, all exhausted from the busy weekend. This weekend will probably include more running again. It’s going be a crazy month, but it’s a pretty safe bet that things will slow down a bit in January and February before the madness begins again.

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!

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