A little jaunt after work

Shane meets regularly with Lexi's mom so that they can work together on cohesive parenting in two households.  This often happens on one of our evenings which means that the little monkey and I get to hang out for a while, to let them talk business.  March 13 was one of those meeting dates and it happened to be a particularly lovely afternoon, so we decided to grab a few caches.

The first park we navigated to was gated off and closed for one reason or another, so we headed out to another in hopes of finding some success. As we pulled in, I recognized it as one we had been to a few years ago when Shane and I first started dating.  It's a nice park and appeared to have several caches ready for a hunt!

#32 Found by Miss Alexis

Lexi was so excited to be out "treasure hunting," just the two of us, she could hardly stand it.  She ran the  trails ahead of me for a while, but settled down and got serious when I told her we were close.  She was very concerned about my attire, as I was still wearing the dress I had worn to work.  She told me next time I should plan better and either dress for the occasion or bring spare clothes so I didn't need to worry about snagging my work clothes on branches or getting my shoes muddy.  I suppose she was spot-on with that observation!

We got ourselves in the right general area and Lexi quickly made the first find of the day.  It was a LARGE bright green ammo can that was too heavy for her to lift alone.  There was also a large piece of bark obscuring it from view that she needed help with. As we were dragging the cache out to inspect it and sign the log, she reminded me again that this would be less worrisome if I had dressed appropriately. :-)

There were a lot of folks on the trails on this mild and pleasant afternoon and Lexi asked me, "Why would anyone want to just walk around or run on these trails and NOT treasure hunt?"  I think that is an excellent question.

The next find was a clever hide.  The name of the cache referenced a bird, so I began thinking "up" as opposed to on the ground.  Luckily, I was thinking right, as it was hanging from a tree branch.  Unfortunately, it was not in its actual hiding spot as the cacher before us had had some trouble putting it back the way they found it and it was out of reach for anyone of less-than-NBA-player-height.  I logged that we found it and that the owner should stop by to replace it where it belonged.  They did so the next day (according to their log in response).


We had hoped to log at least three finds for the afternoon while Shane met with Lexi's mom, but he texted to say they were done early and that he needed me to pick him up.  I informed a very disappointed 5 year old and we headed back for the car.

Once our family was reassembled in the car, we were able to convince Shane that we had time for one more to meet our 3 cache goal on the way home.  We discovered, as a result, a whole new series of caches that are located along a 12 mile stretch of 12 mile road. Any idea how many are hidden in the series?  If you guessed 10, you are WRONG!  :-)  There are, of course, 12 caches in the series.  Each one contains a clue or the code to find the final cache in the series.  The one we found was tucked under a log near a parking lot and contained a few items for trade (which we did not do at this cache), the log and the clue: "e equals 9."  We look forward to discovering the others in this series on pleasant days after work. (This particular area is no where near home and so we would not likely attempt them on days other than those which we work.)

This Tuesday was a short, sweet little hunt after work on a mild and sunny day in March.  We look forward to lots more days like this as the season warms further!  Maybe we would go out in a few days, after all, the weekend that was approaching would be one we would have Lexi....