A Weekend in the Great Outdoors

Alivia got to play taxi driver for her Grandpa on Sunday afternoon. They were going to deliver a ladder to out to a deer stand site and bring back some tools that were no longer needed out there.

By Allan Olson

This past weekend was a fun and busy one, with the majority of it spent playing and working in the great outdoors of Northern Minnesota. I had planned this weekend with my brothers to work on deer stands, since I knew I had no “Friday night lights” obligations to keep me from getting up there on Friday night for an early start on deer stand repairs on Saturday. However, something different did come up that I didn’t expect that kept me from assisting with the repairs.

Earlier last week, I received a message through the geocaching site about a trip to Garden Island on Lake of the Woods – an approximate 25-mile voyage across the big waters of the seventh largest lake in the U.S. I thought about the message, then asked a couple of questions to get more info. Next, I talked about the opportunity with my oldest, and he said, “Go dad, I have you covered.” Then I decided to talk with my oldest brother about it, because I was feeling guilty about ditching them. The conversation with him basically went, “If you have the opportunity to do something like that, then go, but only if you take a lot of photos!” 

I didn’t need to be told again, so I confirmed my spot on the launch, and made sure I had the cash to cover my portion of the trip before I left. In addition to that, I contacted another geocaching friend and convinced him to go, although he couldn’t commit until Saturday morning, after he cleared some work things off his plate.

So on Saturday morning started out with deer stand repairs. Marcus and I headed out first, with the goal of taking apart a stand we built last year and relocating it. Where we put it last year turned out to be not great, and we had another stand in the vicinity that needed repairing anyway, so we just decided to recycle all the materials and rebuild the stand entirely. Marcus worked on that stand with me, and others eventually came out and started hauling materials off to the new stand location. About 30 minutes into it, Marcus was bored and frankly a little nervous about being up in the air on a stand that was slowly being taken apart. I couldn’t really blame him for that; I intentionally left a rail in place for my comfort as long as I could. 

Marcus was soon replaced on task by my nephew Trevor, primarily because he’s the tallest one in the family and I needed that height to help with some of the remaining work. All together the dismantling process took about an hour, and after about three hours the new stand was nearly completed. 

I departed the stand-building operation at noon. My dad came back to the house with me and found a winter hat for me – something which was certainly needed and appreciated by me on the boat trip across the lake.

After working most of the night, my friend decided to stop and nap in his vehicle about a quarter mile from my parents’ place, so right before it was time to go I sent Nikolai to get him. We both jumped in my vehicle and headed to the lake. We knew it was windy and there was a possibility of rain, but we were still committed. We joined the others at the launch out of a local resort and headed northbound across the vast expanse of Lake of the Woods. Our destination was Garden Island, in search of a geocache that was listed in April and had yet to be found. It took an hour over the bumpy waves of the lake to reach our destination, and then, if not for some talented boat driving, we would have had to either skip getting on the island or wade in, and neither of those seemed like a good option especially with the water temp of only 50 degrees. 

The four of us headed over to the first of three stages and found the first one missing, so with just enough cell service, I put in a call to the local state park that was managing this cache, and they kindly provided me with the next set of coordinates but warned me that the next stage might be too faded to read. They were correct, so I called them again, and they provided me with the final coordinates to the geocache. We made the find, took a few photos and headed back to the dock and waited for our boat captain to come in – he was waiting about a 100 yards off shore to avoid having his boat beaten against the dock by the powerful waves. After another hour-plus boat ride, we were back on shore again. Mission accomplished. The entire trip took just about three hours exactly. Once in the vehicle, I cranked up the heat to try and get some warmth back in my bones again.

After we reached my parents’ place, my friend departed and I headed out to find the deer hunting stand repair crew. I found them, but just as I got there the rains came, as had been promised all day, so we abandoned any further repairs for that evening.

On Sunday, we went back to work on a cold, damp and chilly morning. We did seasonal maintenance on three stands and totally rebuilt a stand we probably should have done years ago. That was the last project of the day, and we wrapped that one up at about 6 p.m. I said before we went up that our target time for departure was between 4 and 6 p.m., and we managed to leave just a little after 6 p.m., so that was close enough. 

On the way home, we detoured down an old forest road in the Beltrami Island State Forest for the express purpose of grabbing another geocache near an old townsite, long since abandoned. I jumped out to go find the ammo box hidden in the woods, while Nik and Alivia went to explore the nearby cemetery with four lone graves.

In all it was an awesome but tiring weekend. I think it’s safe to say we all had a lot of fun, and we got some work accomplished. We didn’t get everything on the list done – I guess we should have started earlier in the year, because I don’t know if we will get back again before the hunt. At least we got the high priority ones done; the others might just have to wait one more year.

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.