St. Patty's Day hunt for treasure

Find #43

As always, WARNING, this post may contain spoilers.  I do my best to conceal the actual location and name of caches to keep from giving too much away, but beware as you read on: :-)

Shane was presented with the opportunity to golf with a coworker from his department St. Patty's Day morning.  OF course, he jumped at the chance.  He rarely spends time "out with the guys" like that, so I was all for it.  I had some errands to run, including a manicure appointment, so I just took the little monkey with me and started the day.  When we were done with our nails, we ran a couple more errands and Lexi thought it would be a good idea to do some "treasure hunting" until Daddy was done "playing with his friends." :-)  Sure do love that little girl!  I agreed, so we headed out.
I spotted one that I thought would be an easy park and grab for Lexi, so we drove up to this light post. I was wrong.  It was not at the base like I expected.  We couldn't find it quickly, so we took a few minutes for a bathroom break and returned to take a second look. With more careful inspection, we found it in that metal box that was hanging on the side of the pole, in a magnetic key holder.  Sneaky! We logged our find and moved to a less populated area to avoid the prying eyes of "muggles."

Just a fun Friday

Another beautiful day greeted us on March 16.  Lexi had a half day of school, so Shane picked her up and spent the day with her until I could get out of work.  They washed the car, ran an errand or two and set out to log a couple smileys.  They discovered a sweet little natural area nestled between office complexes and searched for the cache that was supposed to be hidden there.

Lexi really enjoyed the opportunity to sit and admire the view.  It was a marshy area with lots of "locals" (ducks, geese and other critters).

#35 - It was all her!

They searched for quite some time with no luck, so they decided to move on to another hunt and to come back with me in tow to help out.  Lexi's special skills came in handy at the next stop.  It was in a place that required a small person to maneuver over some rocks UNDER a sign.  She was extremely excited to make the find herself.  Find #35 goes to her!

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!

We had no idea how special the Photo Scavenger Hunt would become

One of Lexi's photos, very nice!

We were invited to take part in a Photo Scavenger Hunt the first week of March and I got very excited about it.  I love anything that involves a creative hunt and I love taking pictures, so I couldn't wait to get our list and start thinking about how we were going to get pictures of all the objects.  The rules were pretty simple, establish a team, get creative pictures of team members with the determined objects, have fun. (Okay, they were more defined than that, but you get the idea.)  The list came out at 9am on Saturday March 3 and we were off to the races.  We technically had a whole week to get our pictures taken and submitted, but we hoped to finish as quickly as possible since we only have Lexi half of every week.  

Bottlebrush tree in bloom

First, we tried to link each object to a song title or lyrics to act out.  That proved harder than we thought.  We abandoned that idea for sheer creativity and fun with our pictures. As we looked over the list, Shane told me, I've got that one, when we read "Flower."  I had a manicure appointment around lunch time with Lexi, so I figured he'd show up with flowers and do something cute.  Wrong.  He picked us up from the appointment and, no flowers.  We drove for a little while, but no flowers.  He told me to just trust him, he had it covered, but we needed to hurry because the photo was time sensitive. Time sensitive flowers?  What?  Okaaayy......

Mild March weather in Michigan makes for great times outdoors

The title sounds a bit like a headline, but nevertheless, it's true. We have had a remarkably mild March.  The whole winter was much more mild than any I have ever lived to see so far, for that matter.  What this has meant for us is that we have gotten to feed the need to Geocache even more.  I suspect we will likely stop going quite so often when the weather gets really warm, as we will then be busy in the garden, and the bugs will likely give us cause to stop visiting so many remote locations.  Mosquitoes here breed and multiply with great fervor, so they tend to discourage much time spent in overgrown and moist areas like many we have been visiting as of late.  After about 3 weeks off the geocaching trail, we made our first night time find (cache #21 for us) on 3/9/12.  It was an easy park and grab, part of a series we are familiar with, so we knew right where to look to pick it up.  Even so, it was fun to log our first night time find.  It made us all want to try caching similar hunts at night again soon!

Geocaching: at it again in 2012

#14 was tucked under a log

This entry will share with you finds #14 through #20 for our Geocaching Team - Unlikely Family. If you want to read about the first 13 finds, you can do so here. Warning:  This post may contain spoilers if you haven't been out to this location yet, so please be aware before reading further! :-)


The bug bit us to geocache again in February.  The weather was mild and we were sad we hadn't done more of it last year.  So, we started thinking about where we could go as a family and walk around outdoors to cache for an afternoon.  On February 12, 2012, we got ourselves packed up with pencils, the camera, the toy/trinket exchange bag and bundled up to head out.

What to do when not in the garden, canning or sewing? Geocache!

Last year, we picked up a new hobby that we have recently fallen back in love with.  It's called geocaching.  What is it, you ask?

Cache #1, surprisingly hard to find

From www.geocaching.com:

Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location.

There are some rules for geocaching though: 

(Again taken directly from www.geocaching.com)

Lexi loves exchanging toys!

1. If you take something from the geocache (or "cache"), leave something of equal or greater value.
2. Write about your find in the cache logbook.
3. Log your experience at www.geocaching.com.

I encourage anyone who is curious to go to the website and check it out. There is a ton of information there for the learning! BEWARE! You will want to get out your unused GPS and get hunting before you know it! Once you begin, you won't want to quit!