Meeting the pirates

A musical stick, drop the washers and they swirl down the rod

Erin in a pirate mask

This weekend has been a busy one. Friday night we went over to watch the boys and stayed overnight. Then Saturday we had a geocaching event in Mayville. As we were preparing to head out, there was a quick change of plans when Sam decided to hang out with his soccer team, leaving Erin, myself and John to make the trip up north.  We arrived a little early to find some existing caches that we had missed last time we were in Mayville. We worked to find a couple of micro caches before heading to rainbow park.  There were lots of interesting things within the park. A kinetic sculpture immediately caught my attention as we walked through the park. We found a threaded rod with washers on it that made a musical sound as they slid down as well as an  herb garden that invited you to sample some of the plants. We found the cache fairly quickly in the park and then wandered around a rock maze before heading out. As we were leaving the park we spotted pirates in a park across the highway.  Figuring we were in the right spot for the gathering of the pirate counsel we headed over to say hello. The family that was hosting the get together were all dressed in full pirate gear. It was neat seeing how much they embraced the pirate theme.  The wind was fairly cold as we waited in a shelter in the park for others to show up. It was fun being able to put faces to some of the caching names we've seen in the past few months. When enough people showed up coordinates were handed out to some temporary geocaches in the park. We set out to find them with an older couple and a couple of the pirate children.  The group dynamic was very friendly. Finding the 7 caches took us about an hour. When we got back to the shelter we were shown travel bugs on several of the cars at the event. We enjoyed seeing how involved with geocaching everyone was. After the event in the park we headed over to a local restaurant to grab some supper and warm up. As we waited for the food, we took a quiz on various pirate phrases. I did fairly well, but was beat out by one person who got just a couple more questions right. Erin and John both won door prizes. On the way back all three of us took turns contributing to a ghost story.

A delightful cache

John holding a temporary cache for the event