Geocaching again

 Marcus at one of the 51 geocaches we managed to log on Saturday in the Pequot Lakes/Breezy Point area.

By Allan Olson

As it turned out, I didn’t stay home all day Saturday as I expected. Instead, I went into the woods and did some hunting, just for something else to do, and not for wild game.

A friend messaged me Thursday and basically said, “I’m free this weekend, are you available?” I wasn’t sure if I was free; I knew there was some stuff we needed to do on the home front, but I checked with my wife and I was given the all clear. I made sure to inform both my friend and my wife that I was only going out for Saturday, and that I would likely be bringing at least one child along. I knew Alivia wanted to go see a cousin, Abigail had homework to do, and Nikolai volunteered to dog-sit for a neighbor, so I checked with Marcus. He said, “Maybe… I’ll think about it.” If he didn’t want to go, then I would just go by myself.

On Friday I attended the fun festivities at the homecoming pep fest at the high school, and of course the volleyball and football games that followed, making for a long day of activities. It was fun watching the skits and the volleyball team was victorious, but unfortunately the football team was not. Still, they gave it a solid effort.

As for Marcus, it took him most of the day on Friday to make up his mind, but he finally said he would go with me on Saturday. I warned him that the day would be long – that we would start early and get home late – and he was okay with that, especially when I noted that if he stayed home he would probably just be cleaning anyway.

We departed before 6:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, which required me to get up and ready a full 30 minutes before I usually do during the work week, but I was heading out for a day of fun, so it was worth it. We met my friend at the pre-arranged meeting spot – at the Casino in Walker – and from there we both drove to the first stop, a cache which a group of us couldn’t find a few years ago. Unfortunately, the three of us had the same results on this encounter. From there we traveled south to Jenkins and tried tackling a cache with a high difficulty rating. We learned that it certainly was difficult, as the three of us struck out again. That certainly wasn’t the way we wanted to start our day, going 0-2 on our first two caches. 

We finally got on the board on our third cache, at which point Marcus decided to make things a little more interesting by making a game out of who could find the most for the day. I jumped out of the vehicle and tried to beat him to the find, but he spotted it first, even though I had to recover it because he is “vertically challenged.”

The day continued with a much better success rate – we logged 51 out of 56 attempts, and Marcus was the most successful cacher of the day, claiming the highest number of finds of the three of us. There was one cache where my foot was almost touching it when he spotted it. Of course, I let him recover that one since it was closer to his level.  

He also had fun throwing pine cones at us while we walked around in a grove of pines. Per his rules, we had to announce that we “Found it!” in order to claim a find, and in that particular spot I was trying to get to it before anyone saw what I was doing and he noticed what I was up to and got the find by saying “Found it!” 

On others, he held the cache in hand while my friend and I were still looking, sometimes not saying anything until he was caught literally red-handed, or started making some clever comments like, “What size is it? Is it this size?” before showing us that he had it in hand.

Having him along certainly made it more entertaining for us adults, and quite possibly made our success rate higher, as well. We set our sights towards home from Pequot Lakes at about 6:45 p.m. after spending the day in a 10-mile perimeter of that city. While we made quite a dent in the list of caches, there are still a considerable number there to find, plus the five we couldn’t find that we can go back and try again, plus I know of a couple more from a previous trek in the area.

On Sunday, I made up for not sleeping in on Saturday. I didn’t officially crawl out of the sack until 10:30 a.m., and it was wonderful. I even managed to be productive later in the day. I mowed the leaves (my version of mulching), and then decided to hook up the lawn sweeper and rake them up. In essence I was just playing and burning gas out of the mower before parking it for the season. I got everything but the garden hose put away from the yard, made room in the garage for the mower and lawn sweeper, and did some more cleaning in the garage, so the only thing left to do in there is straighten up my lumber pile.

We also managed to get the spare room closet put back together in an orderly fashion, and my wife made a spectacular meatloaf dinner for the family to enjoy.

As for this weekend, the only thing I know for sure is that we plan to attend NightScreams in Bena with family. I’m sure it will be as spooky as ever; the only question is, will I actually get scared this year. Regardless, it’s always a fun time, especially with family.

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.