Back in the saddle

It's been a busy week for Erin and I, but we've kept our geocaching streak alive and are now currently at 60 consecutive days with a find. We did some tree climbing this week as well as a trek into the woods were we discovered what stinging nettle is.

Last night we got the bikes out to pick up a cache and to meet up with some running friends.  Due to a little miscommunication we didn't meet up with them, but we got in an almost 18 mile ride. It was good to get in some miles on the road bikes, and was a prefect night to be out. We should get in a few more biking miles this weekend.

Geocaching Roadtrip to Gilby

A giant mouse trap in the woods

Erin's older sister Stacey was in town this weekend visiting.  We've taken her geocaching before and she expressed some interest in joining us to do a few more caches. We decided to head out to Gilby, ND because last weekend when we were in Detroit Lakes we heard about some really neat geocaches in that area. Because we had a late start we only found 18 caches, but we were not disappointed at all with what we found. Here are a few pictures of what we found, I didn't include more because I didn't want to spoil the experience for anyone who hasn't found these caches. We are looking forward to when we have some more time to head back up there and find the ones we didn't have time for.

Getting this cache down was tricky, as was getting it open

The log book from a 3 part multi cache

International Geocaching Day

Saturday, August 18th was international geocaching day and since Erin and I have been doing a lot of geocaching lately I figured we'd try to cram as much into this day as possible. We started with the pancake feed at Bean Days in Horace. I'd heard about the this from a couple of guys at work and figured it would be fun to swing by. After pancakes we headed out to do some caching in Hawley. There were a couple of caches North of Dillworth that we stopped to get along the way.  This was one we found, one of our favorites of all time.

Pour water in to get the cache, it also recycles the water so other cachers don't have to bring their own

We had a few DNFs in Hawley including one that we had a long hike to. Once we found the trails we were suposed to be on it went a little more smoothly. There were lots of berries along the path.


After that we headed out to Detroit Lakes for an event at Zorbaz. This was our first geocaching event, and we weren't quite sure what to expect. Initially we had some trouble locating the group, but the event organizer recognized us from some pictures we'd  posted online and invited us over to join the group. We had fun talking about various caching experiences and met a few of the people from Fargo.

After Zorbaz we went and did some caching near Dunton Locks before the mosquitoes forced us out of the area. After that we picked up a few caches around the lake and grabbed supper before heading home. For the day we wound up with 24 caches and extended our consecutive day streak to 48.

Homemade Race Medals Part 2

Erin and I had our second anniversary during my hiatus from blogging.  Since many of our friends were not logging long miles at the time we decided to just have a 5k this year.  We also wanted to stick with our tradition of giving out homemade race medals.  We revisited some of the ideas we had from the previous year and opted to go with a design made out of Perler beads done on  a hexagonal template. For colors we opted for a dark blue and decided that the second color would be the glow in the dark beads. For a ribbon on the medal we went with a sparkly thread. For text we used a blue sharpie.  Here's what the finished result was.

The finished Second Anniversary race medal

The run was a lot of fun. Erin biked because she couldn't run yet, and afterwards we enjoyed our potluck breakfast with our friends.

UPDATE:

Here's what we did for our third anniversary: Homemade Race Medals Part 3

It's been a while

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. Here's a quick recap of what's happened since January.  Erin had a stress fracture in her hip, and I had some knee pain and got lazy. Neither of us participated in the Fargo Marathon. We started geocaching more, and currently have a 44 day consecutive day streak going.  Erin's hip has healed, but I'm still a bit on the lazy side when it comes to running. I figured we're still having adventures so I should get back to posting about them, even if they're not running related.  Hopefully I don't have another 7 month gap in my postings.