A Saturday in the woods

Abigail looking through the contents of a geocache we found in the Pillsbury State Forest. This particular cache could have been crushed by a large tree that was uprooted on top of it, but instead was just pinched a little, so we were able to find it and open and close it without problem.

By Allan Olson

By all accounts, Saturday was a perfect day to be outside. It would have been perfect for fishing or hunting, but instead I did a different type of hunting – hunting “for little containers in the woods” – i.e., geocaching.

Earlier in the week I asked all the kids if they wanted to go with me on Saturday for our semi-annual ditch cleaning event along Highway 71 between Menahga and Park Rapids, and then go geocaching afterwards. Abigail volunteered right away, and the others all indicated that they would rather stay home. I asked the same question again on Friday, and got the same results.

I crawled out of bed at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, woke Abigail up, and we left the house about 30 minutes later. I decided that since it was just the two of us, we would go for coffee and breakfast. We got to the coffee shop, had our drinks and food, and then headed out to rendezvous with another friend heading to the event.

A short time later we were headed south to our ditch-cleaning gathering. There was a pretty light turnout this time, with only six of us (including Abigail) showing up to help clean the ditches. So instead of the normal hour it takes us, it took closer to two.

Usually after our ditch cleaning events, many of us take off on a caching adventure to a destination pre-planned prior to the event. This year the Pillager area was chosen as most of us had not been in that area before. We made one find in Motley – a cache that was hidden in 2003. Then we stopped at a store to get some dry socks and snacks, and then at a fast food joint before starting in our afternoon plan.

We traveled around Pillager finding geocaches. For one, we snuck into their busy fairgrounds and under a building to make a find and got out of there before any of the people there for the horse events asked what we were doing. Of course, it helped that one of our group had found it before, so we knew right where to look.

As the afternoon progressed we made our way into the Pillsbury State Forest, where we spent the next couple hours trekking around the woods, finding more geocaches. At one spot we put Abigail’s physical skills to use – she scampered up a tree to grab a geocache. That was the easy part. The harder part was getting it back into place – she stood on the hands of another member of our group to climb further up the tree.

The daylight started to fade, and so we started making our way out of the forest, grabbing just a couple more geocaches before getting out onto the main roads once again. We made our way back into Pillager and then over to Staples for “just one more” before heading home. We stopped at one, and after signing our names to the paper, we were about to call it a day when I looked at my list and saw that we were at 29 for the day. I said, “We can’t quit at 29 – we need to find one more!” 

All agreed, so we headed to the next closest one, and of course we couldn’t find it. It was well past dark now, but we weren’t about to give up, so we headed down the road to try one more. This time we were successful, with a total of 30 finds for the day, we packed it in and headed north.

I had another geocaching adventure earlier in the week. A friend of mine asked if I could sneak away for one day mid-week, so I checked my schedule and found nothing on the books for Wednesday. Our destination that day was the Land O’ Lakes State Forest near Remer. The two of us spent about eight hours on the trails and on the roads and we found a total of 71 that day. Both of these outings were a lot of fun, and it felt great to be out enjoying the nice fall weather. I’m not sure if October will allow me another such outing, but if the weather cooperates, perhaps I can go bird hunting and geocaching at the same time.

The only bummer of the whole week was on Friday night when I learned that my rifle is no longer safe due to some bad rounds having been fired in it. That means I need to go gun shopping, something which I have little to no experience in since the last rifle I bought was with my dad when I was 14. I’m sure I will figure it out, but the tricky part will be finding the rifle I want, at the right price.

Please remember to watch out for the buses that will be 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.