Kids and caching

My kids are frequently with me when I am out hunting for caches. I have two boys and two girls, ages 6 - 13 years old. Do they always want to go caching with me? No, for different reasons each time. But the saving grace has been our two- way radios, or walkie talkies. If half of us wants the playground (or water, or a different fork of the trail, etc.) and the other half wants to cache (and oftentimes the traffic is too loud or the terrain is too hilly for shouting to be heard), we use our walkie talkies. We can usually maintain visual contact, but audio is often tough because we live in town, with busy highways wrapping around our boundaries. The talkies have been awesome for us.

We use them in non-geocaching life, too. If we are at the ball park and need to split up for different ball fields because game times overlap, we use the walkie talkies until we can meet up again as a whole group. We use the talkies when we're at my family's home place and the kids want to be in the gully unsupervised. I can see us using the talkies at the lake, too -- one in the boat with the fishing group and one in the cabin with the babies.

With a 15 mile range and easy operation, I sound like a commercial. But not until I say the price....Our model costs less than $40 and has a one year warranty (which we have used already). So if we lose one, I won't have to spend a lot to replace it. Now I sound like a commercial.

Happy caching!

Yes, I made it to 100

All ball games were cancelled because of the massive rainfall. So I was able to reach my 100th milestone this evening after the sky decided to stay clear. I had tried this cache, GCM2R1 streetcar trail, before, but I had the outdated coordinates. The newer ones worked much better. I'm never sure about where to park for this bike trail.

The gps-r had low batteries for many days before I reached this cache. Tonight, as I went to get my 101st find, they ran out. I found the cache, replaced the batteries, but couldn't get the power on. I was impatient to get out and find more geocaches. I panicked! What would I do? There was still daylight and no mosquitoes. I made a couple calls, got advice, but it didn't help. Was there a reset button that I didn't know about? I couldn't get the thing on when I plugged it into the car's power supply either. Argh!

I went home and looked in the manual. Troubleshooting. The unit won't turn on. New batteries? Yes. Properly aligned batteries? Yes. Did I hold the power button for a full two seconds? Maybe. I don't remember how long I held the button. I am pretty impatient. So I re-cleaned the contacts, re-checked the alignment of the batteries, then pressed and held the power button and counted to two. Ta-da! The display came up. I felt relieved that the gps-r was working, but frustrated that it would have worked while the sun was still up, enabling me to get to more hides. I drove home in the daylight! That just seems wrong when the weather is beautiful.

Skyscape

Night time often has me in mommy mode, rounding kids up to the bathrooms and bedrooms to get ready for sleeping. Even on weekends when we can relax our schedule. Fortunately, I wasn't home when darkness fell last night, and my husband wasn't in strict daddy mode.

Venus and the moon were two degrees apart last evening. Click on my picture to make it larger so you can see Venus well.

I finally had time to snag a new geocache (#97) around 8 p.m. I knew of a brand new one just one mile from my house, so I hopped on the bike a little before the sun went down. I found it easily, and on the way home, I saw the sky. I had read an email in the afternoon, telling me to get everyone outside to look at Venus and the moon this evening. So I called home quick so everyone could see it, then I got a photo. I felt a great urgency to get home because of the darkness, since I have no headlamp on the bike. Which means that I didn't take the time to change the settings on my camera to landscape and twilight. I really need more practice with this type of shooting scenario.

I also saw Mercury low in the horizon. It was extremely bright. I think we have been seeing it for two weeks now, but haven't confirmed that. But I do know that I saw it last night. We've seen a very bright body at the ball park that has to be a planet. I just never remember to find a night sky map.

Tonight, we should have another great skyscape. We just have to remember to relax and look up.

Crawling to 100 Finds -- with photo

I have a string of geocaches that I have not even attempted. You could call them drive-by's or run-by's perhaps. Things just haven't worked out to get me to the goal of 100, so I am now crawling to 100 finds. I now declare myself a cold weather cacher.

The string includes: McMart GodRanch GCRR7P, in Algona, Iowa; Briggs Falls GCJ8YQ, near Webster City, Iowa; and three new placements by oddestduck in Walnut Woods State Park. For the first two, we were in the area for a funeral of a dear man named Harold Reit, married to my husband's godmother aunt. The Greatest Generation traits were certainly held by him.

We passed McMart GodRanch on the way to the funeral. The name entertained us. We were not late in arriving to the church, and we like to think that it was because we stayed focused and drove by McMart GodRanch.

On the way back home, we stopped at the Grotto of the Redemption. We hadn't been there in eight years. The boys didn't remember being there. Everyone loved it. Matt had "G" go to the top of the grotto. As he stood there looking out over everything, he said in his serious nine year old voice, "Dad, this is so beautiful that I would cry if I could."

After our time there, we were just too tired to attempt Briggs Falls since the day started very early for us. We kept on driving past the entrance to the park. Fortunately, it's only an hour away, so I am sure we can visit here on our own time. We did stop for gas nearby -- at $3.50/gallon. At least there was gas that weekend. (Nearby Ft. Dodge had a shortage the previous weekend.)

As for the Walnut Woods group of caches...well, we're just wimps. For Mother's Day, my hope was to be outside. Alas, the weather was too warm for my enjoyment, so we did not search for them on Sunday. We attempted to find them today since the temperature has been around 70, but the mosquitoes are out in full force. The wind did not help us, as I was hoping it would. We came very very very close to two of the caches. I am sure we were standing right next to them, but standing still and looking for a cache makes us look like a buffet line for the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are not fun. We just drove by the coordinates for the third of the group. Didn't even attempt it once we saw where to go.

Before we left the park, "I" and I went to the river's edge. I have never been there when it was so high. Usually "Rock Heaven" is quite large. It is now under water and very inaccessible.

Oh yeah, I'm at 96 finds. Urban caches, free of mosquitoes, here I come.

The Glazed Tree

Since hearing about Stage 2 of Anchors Away, GCZOTX, our older son has wanted to see the "glazed pine tree." So after our trip to the Boy Scout Store, we stopped at the cemetery mentioned in an earlier post. I erased the waypoint from my gps unit, but we were able to find it without a lot of trouble.

Well, the tree wasn't shiny and multicolored like it was back on our first visit here. It was definitely not as impressive looking as it was back in April. I am guessing that is because the weather was not freezing at night. Hm, maybe that is just for maple sap. Anyway, the icicles of sap are still there, and the ground around the tree was built up and discolored from the sap. "C" was impressed, even after the initial let down of not seeing a shiny tree trunk. The boys managed to find some sap to take home to show Dad. You can see some of it here. The samples went home in an empty peanut butter jar that we had in the van.

On the way out of the cache site in Glendale Cemetery, we drove by Mason Made Me Do It, GC119ZT. My youngest and I tried to find it, but we grew increasingly uncomfortable with all the people walking by. "E" found a pale blue egg shell to show everyone, but no cache. We were there between after school and dinner hours. On top of that, I stepped in a huge pond of water. It was really a grass lawn, but with the 3.1" of rain that fell in the last 48 hours, there was no where else for the water to go. So we left. More caching tomorrow. Actually, probably caching on Wednesday.

Blooming at Thomas Mitchell Park

Here are some flower pictures from my camera, taken at Thomas Mitchell Park last Friday. I don't have good control over where the pictures are displayed on this page. I think you can figure them out: cutleaf toothwort (white with four petals), yellow violet (it's yellow), blue violet (I say it's violet, not blue), jack in the pulpit (the leaf that is bent over), a few fields of many mayapples (no flowers yet, but you can see the "lily pads on stems"). The picture of blue phlox/Sweet Williams and a morel mushroom are in my post from April 27, 2007. There were other flowers that were unopened, too. I am getting frustrated with the photo placement here, so I won't post those photos. Everyone ought to go to a park to see the spring wildflowers. They come but once a year, and your life will be richer because you saw them.

A favorite place for spring blooms is Brown's Woods. By the waterfall, we usually find trout lily (also called dogtooth violet) and squirrel corn, and sometimes Dutchmen's breeches.

Oh yes -- I am closer to having 100 finds. I found GC12B6M Fat Men Can't Jump and GC12D9AIf I Were a Carpenter today, for a total of 90 finds. I think the race to 100 finds will be a slow one, because my life centers around the ball park these days, and will continue to be that way until the middle of June. Hopefully, the weather will keep up the pleasant conditions for us as the ball season progresses. Nice weather also helps for geocaching.

I get my first delivery from Turtle Farm, our CSA, on Thursday - YAY! Asparagus (I have no time or patience for raising this on my own) and two baby tomato plants, Sungold cherry, and one basil plant, too. The tomatoes will go into EarthBoxes, purchased my first summer here, 2000.

Lettuce and Other Food

Well, after ignoring my lettuce through the frosty nights of April, you will see from the picture that the plants survived. I thought you may want to know what happened after my blatant neglect, posted on April 6. I think I had three plants die, but that is not many. And no, I did not put them in rows. The seeds are too small for me to get perfectionistic. Same as carrots, I just sprinkle them and let them grow where they fall. I don't thin my plants either. I am the only one in the house who eats lettuce anyway.

I use raised beds a la _Cubed Foot Gardening_, by Chris Bird. I have done this since 2000 or 2001. It works well for us. My younger son and I each have a box, and we have a fun competition about our gardens. Usually it's related to plant size, or amount of potatoes harvested. Here is a picture of some fun things we dug up one year -- a "foot," a "baby snowman," and a "snowman." We considered entering them at the State Fair's Unusual Vegetable category, but we chickened out. After seeing what was entered, we felt like wimps for not entering. Anyone can grow a squash or watermelon in a mason jar or a cinder block. The most memorable unusual vegetable we ever saw was a carrot that grew through and around an old-style pop (soda, beer, whatever you like) can tab -- the kind that broke away from the can on purpose and cut you. We all giggled when we saw it. What a surprise to whoever pulled or dug it up.

To close today's post, I want to promote Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, here. Although I grow food at home, I also belong to a CSA called Turtle Farm. I got into it through the testimony of a couple families who also belong. This year we are splitting a share with a home school family from West Des Moines. I would share the mom's blog here, but very few of you readers here would be suited for it, because she blogs in Russian. Go plant some veggies, already, everyone. And if you if you don't plant something, you can look for Jean Craighead George's book, Acorn Pancakes, Dandelion Salad and Other Wild Dishes; it is pretty interesting to read. After reading it, you may wonder why we garden at all. George is a favorite author of our family. I also have a book on Native American food. I'll put the title up when I locate the book.