Adventure Day

Well, last night after Brian got home we went to REI and took the plunge into the world of GPS. We have talked about it for a while and finally decided to just go ahead and do it.

Last night I read over some of the manual and this morning I played around with it until I had it pretty well figured out.

I got myself to the geocaching site and looked a few up. There was one pretty close to home and while it was in walking distance I decided to drive since it was basically on the way to another one.

I got the kids some breakfast, got them dressed and I made up a few little mini knitting needles with some knitting on them to leave behind in the caches (if you want to take something you have to leave something).

We finally got out the door at about 11:30 so I knew it was going to be a late nap day for Jake. Fortunately the first cache was exactly where I thought it was and I was able to park the car right next to it and not get the kids out of their car seats (really it was only a couple of feet from the car). I was so very excited to make my first find! It will take a bit of getting used to using the GPS device as it only gets you close, but that is part of the fun too - you actually have to LOOK.

Sooo..into the bush next to the car I went...

I found it!

Here it is with it's Camo on.

Open:

All the stuff that was inside, plus my knitting...I took the scented bubbles for Jacob.After signing the log I headed off to Wapato Park to start searching for the next cache. This particular cache is something called a multi-cache where the coordinants to first clue are given and once you find that spot you get coords to the next and so on until you find the actual cache.
We walked around until I realized we were going to have to hike up a small but steep hill. Not easy to do with a 2 year old and 15lbs of baby strapped to your chest. Anyway at the top of a beautiful waterfall in the park with this beautiful view. See that fencepost on the right in the shade?
how about now?:
And bending around to see the side I found the next set of coords!:
We headed down the hill (btw it's even harder to go down hill while carrying both children- even if Abby was strapped in) and started to look for the next spot but ended up passing the playground and that was the beggining of meltdown.
One of the clues said something about walking the plank and there was a dock very close so I managed to get Jake to head that way with the promise of coming back to the playground. I think I searched that stupid dock for 15 minutes before I got the bright idea of actually looking at the GPS and seeing that I was WAY off of where I needed to be (there was another dock on the other side of the lake). I decided to stop my search for the day and let Jake play on the playground. On our way back we were followed...
Make that chased:
I kid you not this damn goose was inches away from us and wouldn't leave us alone until he saw someone else at a picnic table with food. Aparently someone has been feeding the critters cuz they are are pretty fearless and bold around people...plus poor Jake- that thing was as tall as he is.
Anyway he got to play for a while and then we loaded up into the car, headed to the store, grabbed a few things for dinner and headed home.
I got Jake some lunch and then put him down for a nap around 3 (he usually goes down around 12). Got a break for about an hour and then it was time to start dinner...I made some yummy yummy mac n cheese from scratch...I use the Fannie Farmer recipie with WAY more cheese than it calls for but this time I used blended up fish cracker for the topping (rather than bread crumbs with butter) and that was absolutally the way to go. I reccomend it.
Anyway that was the day of adventure we had. Hopefully the cache will be worth going back to find another day.