One Hour of Alone Time

My oldest son occasionally requests that he have alone time. I like the idea of having time to oneself. So today, I took an hour of alone time to geocache. The weather was pleasant, we had frosts to kill some underbrush, I've been wanting to get out for a long time to cache -- everything was working out perfectly.

Trail Daze was held during the first weekend of June in conjunction with Iowa Geocachers Organization's IGO Camping Too. The NVG placed many geocaches along county trails for the event. I was pretty excited to have a high density cache area close to my house.

When my kids and I visit the Clive Greenbelt trail, we use the trailhead off of 100th St. in Clive. Today I used the portion of the trail between 86th and 73rd St. -- an area that was completely new to me. There was access from the parking lot behind the retail area in the NW corner or 86th St. and University Ave. The trail goes under 86th St. And since it was a weekend, the parking lots behind the businesses on Swanson Blvd. are available -- no fences blocking your way to the trail.

Anyway, I was able to get four regular caches today. I have a lot of catching up to do for all rainy days and hot days that kept me from going out. As I was logging my finds, I noticed that I have 146 finds. That means that I am close to 150 finds, which would get me recognition on the IGO website. In finding the caches today, I was able to see how nature transitions to fall and winter. Without the leaves, I saw a natural apartment complex and a natural snack bar!

Clover Kids

Our Clover Kids groups descended upon Walker Johnston Park this afternoon. One of the best things I heard was a sincerely happy report of, "I was the first to find it!" In the past, I used identical containers for all the class caches. This time, I used four different kinds of containers.

The worst thing I heard was from my youngest child. "Mom, don't worry. I dropped the blinkie somewhere in this circle." The circle was a tramped down area of long, wet grass, about eight feet in diameter. She and her friends had searched for it earlier. I didn't look very long. She wants to go back with our metal detector.

I saw kids nicely taking turns in holding the gps, being the first in their party to sign the log book, etc. Another sound I heard was the wail of kids who didn't find the container first. That can be common in our family at times. In the first class that I taught in March 2007, I had everyone practice saying "huckle buckle beanstalk." At least one family used it during their hunt that afternoon. I didn't teach huckle buckle beanstalk this time, so I'll explain it here for the families that I met today.

"Huckle Buckle Beanstalk" is a phrase that you can say out loud when you're in a group. Sometimes the people in your group want to "find" the geocache without being the actual finder. Anyone in the party who finds it, finds it for the group. Sometimes everyone wants to find the cache on his/her own. In this case, if you see the geocache, you don't want to give away its location. At this point, you can say nothing and let everyone bumble around for a while longer, or for example, if you are with impatient kids who can't stand not seeing the geocache yet after three minutes already, you can say "Huckle buckle beanstalk" as a way to let them know, "It is here, and you're close." Each person in our party says the phrase as they find it. The cache is usually found within a minute by everyone after the huckle buckle beanstalk announcement. There is some satisfaction in finding it without help.

My family usually doesn't move on to playing "hot and cold," but I suppose that would be the next step if someone really truly can't find the geocache and wants to do it "alone." I used "hot and cold" a couple times today for the micros -- a magnetic key holder and a blinkie.

October (un)happenings

What is up with the weather? Oct. and Feb. have been big caching months for the last two years for me. Even though I am a fairweather cacher, I think that I can still say, "All this rain is ridiculous!" The forecast is seriously dampening my plans for the Clover Kids temporary caches that I need to place for Friday afternoon. So I'm having an un-caching month. On our trip to IL last weekend, I didn't feel one bit motivated to get muddy and score a smiley face before my family reunion. The geocaches will be there for a long time yet, right? I still have chances to get those smileys.

Update on the E911 Urbandale project: The IGO community seems to be fairly warm and ready to the idea of volunteering. I think we just lack details to make decisions on volunteering -- which (portion of a) trail, pertinent dates for beginning and ending, using consistent gps units, etc. Just lots of unknowns out there.

The Parks and Rec director for the city has a meeting tomorrow night that may fill in these blanks. She may also come to the Clover Kids class to learn about geocaching as an activity. Hopefully she'll be able to synthesize all of this information in to something concrete for me.

Urbandale geocaching udpate

From the parks and rec director's follow-up message to me:

I have a meeting on October 23, 2007 with the group of representatives from different cities, and police departments, etc. regarding the next step for getting the signs put in.  After that, I should be able to give you more details.
Right now I just know that Des Moines and West Des Moines are putting in some signs, and are being the "pilot" groups.

I will keep you posted, and greatly appreciate your interest and help with this!
I hope it works out to gain the assistance from your group....as we get more firm details on the project.
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In other news, I have been very hesitant to face the mosquitoes and go after some cool-sounding geocaches. The mosquitoes are bad enough in my yard, I cannot imagine going in to a wooded area and having the bugs be better. We have a geocoin to place (still), and I am feeling bad about keeping it this long, so I may stick it in an urban, already found, cache.