Accidents

I had to cache today. The rest of the week is forecasted to be rainy and cold. Today was bright and somewhat warm. I took 3/4 of GAIN out with me to Southwoods Park. I saw that friend akruse had found a cache that we had not. If they could find this one, so could we. And I am proud of their find.

Accident #1. A neighborhood kid was at the park when we got there. He kind of hitched on with us and helped us find Jim Dandy, GC145RB. This kid had no idea that geocaches existed in this park (there are 4), but I said that it was cool that he knew about geocaching. His reply was, "Oh yeah. My neighbor invented it." When I asked who his neighbor was, he said something that sounded like "Carl and Digger." Anyway, running in to this guy was fun. He showed the kids his fort. He also has a cliff. Southwoods would be a great place to have for a backyard. The backyard of my youth was like Southwoods, maybe that is why I like it so much.

Accident #2. We stayed to go creek stomping, pastime of "N," since he was 3 years old. While crossing to the other side of the creek, eyes on the water below her and not above, "I" of GAIN ran into a tree trunk. Hard. She scraped her scalp. The wound is hidden by her long hair. Despite the crying, she said that she was OK enough to stay and play. She really really did not want to leave. There was no blood, so I thought that would be OK.

Accident #3. We found some moss in its reproductive stage. Cool. We did not expect, plan, or predict that at all. Found very near the scraping accident. "I" took some home. (Will we ever leave a place empty-handed?)

Accident #4. "N" of GAIN found an old giant puffball floating down the creek. It was stuck against the bank by a fallen tree.

Accident #5. "N" had his boots crack and leak. He hasn't even had these for a year. Mr. GAIN remembers similar boots in his family lasting for years. Is he misremembering? Is his history being tinted with the rose colored lenses of his age? Eventually, "N" stepped in a deep spot in the creek, got water coming in from the top of his right boot (they are knee high). Because his socks were now wet, we couldn't get his boots off. He was able to dump some of the water out, but had a fairly sloshy hike back to the car. We definitely had to leave after his accident. Which is OK in the steep hills. Hills make the sunset seem to come early. That was also unplanned, but everything seemed to work out for the best. I had forgotten to set the time-bake feature on our dinner, so it was best for us to get home when we did.

Pleasant and Unplanned Sights due to Geocaching

Today we had to return our library books. I wanted to just return the books, then visit a different library where we could check out videos -- free of charge for three weeks -- YAY Clive! So 3/4 of GAIN and I hopped in to the van. ("N" and Matt are away at a Boy Scout camping weekend.) I asked if we could find just one geocache, GC119ZC, after we visited the book return. They agreed to it.

After nearly getting an arm cut off with all the joshing around at the book drop, we headed over to the other side of the fence to the cemetery. Yes, a geocache at a cemetery. Glendale Cemetery happens to be where my maternal grandmother's mother, father, and step-father are buried. We've been here before, but Glendale is such a large cemetery that I never explored much of the grounds. I usually get down to business when I come here, visiting the places on the map that the office people kindly marked for me, then leave. Maybe if I walked my dog there, I would know more about the things you can see, but we don't have a dog.

We got near the cache, a part of the grounds that I had never seen before. "A" quickly found the geocache. The younger two were off like shots through the dead forbs and grasses. "I" used her baton to clear a path because she hadn't seen the pre-existing path, and "G" found an empty nest of some sort. (I'll get a photo here after I figure out how to get it out of my camera; that is usually Matt's job.) It was open and cup-shaped, completely made of grass, and rather close to the ground. I'll look in our Bird Nest book. (I know, Iowa isn't east of the Mississippi River, but I have yet to find a nest that wasn't in here.) I was unsuccessful in removing it from the plant it was built on. I think mice and voles and such have spherical nests. Stay tuned for an update.

Once we got back in the van, I noticed that our gps-r showed that we were close to stage two of a multi-cache, GCZ0TX. This lead us to the area where Great-Grandma Ross's stone is located, near the boundary for the Masonic Cemetery. We found an evergreen tree that was thickly coated for at least the bottom 15 feet with sap! We stood in amazement, because we thought our old tree, removed in 2003, was a leaky old thing. Never would have seen that unless the gps-r pointed us there! Everyone enjoyed the creativity of stage two. I saw that we were close to some other geocaches, but looked at the time and told everyone that we needed to go.

The kids were quite reluctant to leave, having found interesting large family plots and tombs, Spanish War cannon, and a sticky tree, and positively identifying the call of a northern flicker for the first time, but since the library closes at 5 on the weekend, we headed west for the library with the free videos. The ride home was silent, as is our custom after library visits. The next hour or so was also quiet, everyone engrossed with a book or video. A wonderful way to close the day.

Spring Pt. II

We (re)visited Raccoon River Park Friday to present a geocaching class. Before we headed to the soccer side of the park, we went to the nature lodge to pick up our reserved "Life in a Pond" Park Pack. This is a backpack filled with picture books, identification books, games, magnifiers, etc. for different ages. The naturalist was very friendly and let us into the classroom to see all the animals living at the lodge.

My kids played in the nearby marsh, ready to collect anything that crossed their paths, clad in rubber boots and armed with seining nets and tubs. They came back with a chorus frog and a small snake. We have now come full circle -- hearing some frogs two and three weeks ago, seeing (bullfrog) tadpoles in various stages at the Reiman Gardens one week ago, and now catching a frog to view up close. We really like _The Salamanders and Frogs of Iowa_ and an audio cassette of frog calls from our Park Pack to help us learn more about the animals we're discovering.

The families who met us at the park for class added to our animal count: an owl, a red-sided garter snake, Canadian geese, and mallards. And Cole and Gabe loved that people had trouble finding the container (HS4) that they hid in the rocks.

Free Stuff

I am all about free. This entry is about free (educational) stuff. This morning, my youngest and I went to the Polk County ISU Extension Office to get our area's gps kit for Friday's geocaching class. (The class is over-full, but we like home school parties.) We are using this kit free of charge, and it includes (from the extension website):

The kit includes the following:

*10 Garmin eTrex GPS Systems

*10 Brunton Compass

*10 Bullseye Compass

*Video “The ABC’s of Compass & Map”

*CD of Brunton Navigation Curriculum

*MapTech Software (Topographic Maps)

*Overhead Teaching Compass

*Brunton Navigation & Mapping Activities

*CD that includes: GPS Activities, GPS References, and Compass Activities

Cost of the Ready to Navigate with GPS! Kit is $1700.

Pretty jazzed about it all. Except that our thumbs hurt from entering the coords in to all the units. And one of the units has a bad crack in the glass.

I also received two identical kits from the Heartland AEA 11 office. I love the envelope of extra batteries that Heartland supplied. I was wondering what I should do if any batteries wore out. That almost evens out the difficulty that I have in working with Heartland and their resources.

So I have 30 gps receivers (gps-r's) at my house. I thought that I would have 2 gps-r's from Heartland, not 2 kits with ten units apiece. I think the Heartland AEA contact thought the same thing. The gal there told me that if I needed more gps-r's that I should "call the Extension, because they have ten identical units to ours, and it sounds like you need more than the two that we can supply." Can you imagine anyone carrying a large suitcase for only one gps-r? (thinking now of bomb-toting bad guys) Can you picture me carrying ten of those suitcases around?

Anyway, while I was waiting to talk with the Extension gal, I happened to pick up a brochure entitled Teaching Kits, Check Them Out! The brochure lists many kits with a large variety of topics for different ages, containing equipment, curricula, games, etc., either free or $1/week. I learned that anyone can check these kits out -- you do not need to be a 4-H leader (my former misconception). At Heartland, usage is very restricted, so the Extension may become my new BFF for learning about non-nature topics. For nature, I like the city (love that West Des Moines has a two week check-out period) and County Conservation Board's Park Packs. Free and fun stuff!!!

Moral of the story: if you need many gps-r's, you do not need to beg your friends and run around town collecting all of them. Just call your local Extension office. The people at our office were friendly and they want to see us use all of their stuff. Free stuff.