Second trip to Watertown

Matt doing his strongman act

This weekend I had another chance to go geocaching near Watertown in South Dakota. Since my appendectomy canceled my last trip I had planned there I was really excited that I was able to find some friends that wanted to go. Not just because I wanted some help in this endeavour, but because it would be fun to road trip with them.  When Matt and Zoa agreed to go I took what I had learned from the last trip down and started to come up with a plan. Bringing along stuff for lunch worked well last time and even a bit better this time.  With three of us in the truck, Zoa was able to make sandwiches as Matt and I kept caching. The map I made last time worked well, so I mapped out a route with around 230 caches for this trip.  I thought it would be a bit more then we had time for, but if things went well we would be able to do it.

We started caching around 8:15 in the morning and quickly found our groove.  Again having 3 cachers was a big advantage. One person could drive and depending on the side of the road that a cache was on one person could hop out and make the find. Most of the caches were quick finds and tended to be very repetitive, but there were a few along the way that challenged us.  At first evergreen trees slowed us down, but by the end of the day Matt was running right up to them and making the find.

Some hot grasshopper on grasshopper action

A few of the recently placed caches had us stumped. They had been found recently, but we couldn't make the find. Overall we finished the day finding 215 with only 8 DNFs I was very satisfied with our results.  I would like to move up to the #2 spot in North Dakota for number of finds and this trip brought us to around 150 caches left to hit that goal. It was an exhausting trip, but spending time with Matt and Zoa made it a lot of fun.

Fun DNF

Monday we were a little burned out from going to Valley City and Grand Forks.  We decided we'd take a quick trip to Barnesville to go after a cache that hadn't been found in over a year.  We found ground zero easily enough, but there were some bikers there so we had to wait a bit before starting the search. The bikers pointed out some snails in the water to us as we stood on a nearby bridge. When they left we climbed around on the rocks searching for about half an hour before deciding to move on. It was a neat area, but we weren't able to make the find.  As we left town we grabbed a quick cache along the highway to keep our streak alive.

Road Trip to Valley City

A neat stairwell on campus

With Erin not feeling well we decided to cancel our long road trip this weekend and do a smaller caching trip to Valley City. Lindzee was free Sunday and was able to come with. We started caching near the college. The first couple of caches we went after were a little ways up the hill, making for some challenging terrain. After that we found a series of micros around town and made the find on some caches we missed in the winter. From there we headed north up to the dam. Erin and I probably bored Lindzee with stories from when we biked our first century in this same location.  When we finished caching at the dam Erin was feeling even worse so we headed back to town to find some food.  So far every time Erin and I had eaten in Valley City we were disappointed. We decoded to give the Broken Spoke a chance.  The food was pretty good, but our waitress didn't seem to know what was going on. It was by far the best dining experience we've found in Valley City. After eating we returned to Fargo and Erin and I finished our fantasy football draft.

Footsteps in the dark

Having completed our 1 year caching streak we decided to keep going.  In August Groundspeak was doing souvenirs for 31 days of caching, so we wanted to keep finding a cache a day at least until September. On the last day of the 31 days of caching August challenge, Erin and I took a road trip to Grand Forks. We were looking forward to seeing friends at the event that day, as well as trying to find some caches we had DNFed previously. The first few caches were fairly easy, but then we got to some trycacheus hides.  A couple of them had us stumped and we decided to move on although we were able to come back later and find them. After spending the morning caching we went to the event around 1:00.  The event had a great turnout, and we had a great time talking with other cachers. We played a few games and Chad grilled up some burgers for everyone.  When the event finished up we went out to grab a few more caches before meeting up with the pirate clan to draft our fantasy football teams.  We tried to go to Buffalo Wild Wings, but after waiting almost an hour for a table after being told it would take 15-20 minutes we decided to just grab something fast.  We wound up at Burger King, so the younger kids could play. We only made it halfway through the draft that night, but after leaving Burger King we went for the Grand Forks night cache.  I really enjoyed the night cache and thought it was well done.  The pirates had a good time, but said the night cache in Detroit Lakes was a better cache. We had so much fun we couldn't cram it all into one day.  We made it home about half an hour past midnight.

Hanging out after the night cache.

Erin and Anabelle after doing the night cache

Just a warning to Grand Forks cachers, there are spoilers ahead...








At one of the caches today we arrived at ground zero and were stumped.  The description said it might be off by 12 feet, but there wasn't much to look at. A nearby sign and fire hydrant obviously didn't have the cache and beyond that was either the street, or private property.  As we stood there puzzled, a neighbor drove up and parked in the driveway. Trying to not look suspicious we started to walk down the bike path.  About 200 feet off ground zero was a drainage tunnel.  It had standing water, so we decided not to search it at this time. I didn't want to get our feet wet early in the day and then be miserable for the rest of it. After leaving and doing some more caches Erin wanted to go back and try the tunnel.  We first stopped at K-Mart and grabbed some cheap flip flops for Erin and a towel to clean up after the search then we headed back to ground zero.  We figured it was about 200 feet down the tunnel, with Erin's feet measured at 10.5 inches we knew she would need to have a small gap between her steps and she could just make 200 steps. This strategy payed off, when she stopped counting at 200 the cache was right there. Erin opened it up to find a blank log.  It was great being able to be the first to find on this fun and challenging cache.

Erin down the tunnel

Steph's Wedding Weekend - Saturday/Sunday

Lake Itasca in the early morning light

Erin and Rodney outside the logging camp

Saturday morning started early, we had told Rodney that we would meet up with him at 6:00 am to go geocaching. As we were getting ready I was sneezing and felt some seasonal allergies kicking in.  I asked Erin if we had anything and she gave me an allergy pill.  She warned me that she takes them at night because they cause drowsiness. Not being all that concerned I took the pill and we were on our way. The cache we went for was in the northern part of the park.  Well, not technically in the park, but close enough.  We were able to park about 500 feet from ground zero and take a trail right to where we needed to go.  We were near some cabins, so we quickly and quietly found the cache and were on our way. We decided that since we had found the cache quickly we'd have plenty of time to go to breakfast at the logging camp near Park Rapids. On the drive over we had time to chat with Rodney.  Years ago he spent a summer working at a nearby resort, so we got to hear some interesting stories.  We arrived at the logging camp a bit early so we wandered around a bit before heading in to eat. It had been years since I've eaten year, but I still had a sense that the place was familiar.  Breakfast was fantastic, and we all had our fill before heading back to the park. I was glad that we were able to sneak this fun excursion into our trip.

Mmmm... Pancackes...

Picture Time

The back of Luck and Rachelle with the musicians in the distance

When we arrived back at the park Erin rounded up her stuff to help Steph get ready.  Around this time is when the allergy pill started to kick in, and I went to lay down. The next thing I knew my phone was ringing and Erin was telling me I needed to get ready and go down to the dock for pictures. I got dressed and ran into Rachelle just outside the cabin. She pointed me in the right direction and I soon ran across my dad.  He didn't want to walk down to the docks and then back up in the heat, so we drove down and waited for pictures. The day was starting to heat up, and there was a fair bit of humidity. The AC in the van felt wonderful. Pictures didn't take too long and after that I drove over to where the ceremony was going to take place with dad. I spent some time chatting with Tim, the officiant, while people were arriving.  It had been a while since I'd seen him, and it was nice being able to catch up with him. When the ceremony was ready to start I found an empty seat with Rodney and Betty. Tim came over and handed me the marriage licence and said we'd meet up afterwards to get things signed.  The ceremony itself was fairly brief.  Tim was really funny, and the breeze off the lake helped keep everyone cool.

Steph and dad walking up.

After the ceremony everyone headed over to the reception, except Steph and Jake who went to take a few more pictures.  When they finally showed up there were a few more family pictures before we ate.  I was disappointed with the food, but that seems to be common for most weddings I go to.  When the party died down, I went back to the cabin to change before coming back to help take down decorations. After that we headed to Koreen and Dan's cabin again for some more Farkle and Bean Bag Toss. I stayed until just after it got dark and the fire was going.

The following morning everyone was planning on grabbing breakfast together, however when we got up and started talking to people they all began to bail on breakfast.  After saying our goodbyes Erin and I went over to the lodge to checkout and have breakfast.  We both had the french toast special and were very pleased with it.  The waitress told us that they had just switched to a new bread for it that day.  When we were done with breakfast we headed out of the park and down to Park Rapids to do some geocaching.  We found a fun PMO only cache and cleaned up a cache we had missed on a previous trip.  From there we stopped a couple of times for caches before arriving in Detroit Lakes.  We tried to find the final of a multicache we had started previously, but even with an extra hint from the cache owner we couldn't make the find. We then headed south of town for some new caches that were put out for a recent event, but it was getting hot out and we were feeling a little frustrated so we decided to call it a day.

Steph's Wedding Weekend - Friday

The view on our drive to Itasca

Friday morning Erin and I had a couples massage scheduled. I was still a bit tender from my recent surgery, but felt good enough to go ahead with it. Laying on my stomach was a little uncomfortable at first, but I soon forgot all about that.  Both Erin and I thought this place was better than the last one we had gone to for a couples massage.  After the massage we headed back home to pack up some final things and then we hit the road for Itasca.  

No, this isn't the same picture, look at the trees

We needed to find a cache along the way to keep our streak alive, so we stopped in Hawley.  The cache was a bit tricky, with a tool being the only obvious thing at ground zero, however after looking at the hint we found the container and got the log signed.

Yeah, that's the same truck in front of us.

When we arrived in Detroit Lakes we stopped at Perkins for lunch.  I think the kitchen was really backed up that day. It took forever to get our food. With all of the neat places there are to eat out here it's amazing how often we just go to Perkins.  There's something to be said for consistency and predictability.

Cabin #4 - The Best Cabin

Dan taking a picture of a very tame chipmunk

After lunch we drove the rest of the way to Itasca.  It was a good thing that we had broken the trip up because when we arrived I was already feeling a little sore from sitting so long.  We checked in right away, but since the cabin hadn't been cleaned we weren't able to get the keys for it. From there we went over to where the reception was going to be held. Erin decided to help with the decorations, but since I wasn't terribly interested in getting yelled at for putting things in the wrong place and since I couldn't really do much anyway with my lifting restriction I decided to see who was around.  I wandered around a bit before finding Shelly and Betty who had returned from their walk.  After that we went up to Koreen and Dan's cabin and played some Farkle.  It's a dice game similar to one I've played on the computer before. It was fun, but Koreen seemed like she's way better at the game then everyone else.  I'm not sure how she kept getting lucky, but the luck seemed to last all weekend. After a bit the guys showed up. Rodney, Dan, and Luke had rented bikes from a local place. Koreen left to go help with flowers and we transitioned into playing a bean bag toss game. Rodney and I teamed up and were pretty good, we only lost 1 game to Jason and Rhonda and it was somewhat close. Eventually my family finished up what they were doing and came over.  The plans had been changed from going to Zorbas into just eating at the cabin. Steph, dad and I took a few minutes to go back to her cabin so she could do a last minute hair cut. When we returned there were hot dogs and brats ready and we had supper. After eating we hung out around the fire until Erin and I went to bed.

Steph's cabin

Rodney, Rhonda, Jason and Steve

The group eating supper

Dan building the fire

Jailbreak

This is what freedom looked like this morning.

Recovery from my surgery has been going well. I've been able to move around more each day and the pain is diminishing.  I've been off the pain meds since Tuesday night and my head has cleared. It's been nice being able to recover at home, but being stuck in the house has started to wear on me. This morning after I got up and showered I figured I would attempt to find a cache myself.  I decided to head North on I-29 to Argusville I had grabbed most of the caches up there, but there was one more easy one to find.  The drive out was pleasant, it was a cool sunny morning and I had the windows down.  When I arrived at ground zero I took a moment to appreciate being out of the house before making the quick find.  On my way home I stopped by Walmart for a few odds and ends.  After a brief rest at home my mom stopped by and we went to Costco and grabbed lunch.  It might have been a bit much for me. When I got home I was feeling fatigued and took the opportunity for a nap.

My brush with death (or just a routine surgery)

Saturday morning started the same way many Saturdays in the past had.  We got up a little early and met Connie for a 3 mile run. It was my worst run of the week. The pace was fairly slow with lots of walking.  When we got back Erin and I did some yard work since we were already hot and sweaty.  She started pulling weeds while I mowed the lawn. After I finished I helped her pick weeds for a while longer before we went in and cleaned up. I spent some time getting a few new geocaches ready to publish and decided I would skip breakfast and have a very early lunch.  Pizza was sounding good.

After eating my stomach was getting upset so I went downstairs for a nap. When I woke up my stomach was still upset and I didn't feel like doing much of anything.  We had planned a caching trip on Sunday with Clark and Mike and I needed to get our Garmins setup for that, but didn't want to leave the couch. As the evening progressed I was feeling worse and worse. Eventually I texted Mike and Clark that I would be cancelling the caching trip.  I was really disappointed that I needed to cancel, but I knew it was the right call. Thinking I might just be painfully gassy Erin picked up some generic Walmart Gas X. That seemed to help a little with the pain.

Saturday night I decided to sleep in the basement, since it was a easier to sleep on my back with the bed propped into the corner of the room.  Throughout the night the pain persisted and switched from a general pain throughout the abdomen to the lower right side of the abdomen. I started to think this was something more serious then just something I ate.  When I got up for the morning I had Erin search online for symptoms of appendicitis. It seemed to be a pretty good match for what I was experiencing. Not wanting to believe that diagnosis I decided to see how I felt after a shower.  Standing in the shower didn't help anything and I finally decided to go in to the Emergency Room.

We decided on going to Essentia since it was close. The ride over was very uncomfortable and I noticed every single bump in the road. I was glad we didn't have to go all the way downtown. After getting checked in at the ER we killed some time in the waiting room.  I was uncomfortable, but as long as I didn't move I wasn't in too much pain.  Since they were out of rooms in the ER I wound up on a bed in the hallway next to a staff refrigerator and ice machine. The first thing they wanted to do was get some blood from me, and start an IV.  The IV seemed to go in fine, but getting blood was a bit more difficult.  The first nurse was unable to find anything in my left arm, so she got another nurse to try my right arm.  This time after some digging she finally got some blood.  After getting a urine sample they said I would need to wait for the lab work.  It came back faster then I thought it would but was inconclusive.  My white blood cell count was somewhat elevated, but not enough to indicate appendicitis.  They said they could either do a CT scan, or send me home.  This didn't feel like something that would get better by going home, and since I thought it was appendicitis I decided to get the scan.  The scan was quick, and an interested experience, and the results showed that it was appendicitis.  I was told they would schedule the operator for today, and the doctor would swing by to see me.  In the mean time I would be waiting in the hallway until they would get a room for me.  The doctor dropped by and said there were a lot of operations going on today and it would probably be sometime in the afternoon before I would go in.   He briefly described the operation and was on his way. This was the only time I saw him, although Erin said she did talk with him after he was finished operating on me. Since we were just waiting, Erin decided she would go grab a cache to keep the streak going, and get some lunch.  I waited in the hall for around an hour or so before someone can to take me up to a room.  She asked if I wanted a wheel chair, but I said I would try walking.

The trip up to the room was quick and soon I was laying in bed answering questions for another nurse. Within a few minutes of getting up to the room Erin came in. After answering the questions for the nurse I changed into the hospital gown.  She said it would still be a while before surgery and asked if I wanted something for the pain.  I was a little hesitant, but decided to try it.  I got morphine, which did wonders for the pain. The afternoon passed slowly as I waited for surgery. Around 3:00 there was some action getting me prepped, but then they came back and said it would be around 5:30 before I went down for surgery. As I waited I tried not to think too much about what was going to happen. I've never had any kind of surgery before and was a bit nervous.  Since there wasn't any other option then getting my appendix taken out I just focused on moving forward through the process.  When the time for surgery came around I was wheeled down.  We we got to the operating room I moved onto the table and was told to breath some oxygen.  I remember about 3 breaths and then fighting to regain consciousness in the recovery room and needing to cough.  I think they asked about my pain level, and I thought they game me something for it, but my abdomen was still hurting quite a bit. I didn't feel like I was in the recovery room for long before they brought me back to my room.

At least that's how I remember it, it's still a bit fuzzy.  I think Erin left after that to get a few things to stay the night. Just before she got back I remember the fuzziness suddenly fading.  It was like waking up, although I was already awake.  The nurses said that it would help my recovery if I could get up and move around.  Moving hurt, but knowing it was the right thing to do I pushed through the discomfort.  After using the bathroom I was able to walk around the hallways for a bit before heading back to my room. Lindzee had brought Erin some gummy worms when I was in surgery and I had a few of them. They were delicious.  I watched some TV to pass the time, and sometime around 10:30 I was able to eat some peanut butter toast. After that I decided to try to get some sleep.  I was hooked up to an IV which seemed to pass right into my bladder. I was running to the bathroom quite a bit before asking to have the IV slowed down.  After that I was able to get a little sleep between trips to the bathroom and being woken up to have my vitals taken.

In the morning I had some more antibiotics pumped in.  I was hungry but was hoping to get out of the hospital before having a real meal.  A doctor dropped by and let me know they could stop the IV but didn't give more details then that.  After I was unhooked from the IV I got up and moved around as much as I could. I was eager to get out of there.  Since there wasn't much on TV on a Monday morning Erin and I watched the finale of Whodunit on my Surface. Right as it finished the nurse came and in said I could go.  She gave me a prescription for some pain meds and some instructions on what I needed to do to take care of myself.  After packing up Erin and I were on our way home.

We stopped by the grocery store to get some bacon and bread.  I was craving bacon sandwiches. When we got home, Erin made the sandwiches which were awesome. Then I showered and took a nap.  I was hoping to not have to get the prescription filled for the pain meds, but later on in the afternoon I realized that I would need them. If this writing isn't up to my usual standard blame the meds.

Day Trip to Wahpeton and Fergus Falls

Last weekend Erin and I took a trip to Wahpeton and Fergus Falls to do some geocaching. We had cleaned out Wahpeton before, but enough new caches had been put out to justify the trip.  Most of the caches we picked up in Wahpeton were micros, and not many really stood out. We were finally able to claim a find on Artificial Cache which we had been to 2 previous times.  It was neat seeing the area in the summer after seeing it in both the winter and spring.  I wish I would have taken some pictures to show the differences. From there we stopped by Foxhome MN on our way to Fergus Falls.

Erin and the town founder

We arrived in Fergus around lunchtime and stopped by Mabel Murphy's for some lunch which was excellent as always. We wanted to leave a few caches in Fergus Falls to find when we're down here for a wedding in a few weeks, so we targeted some of the ones we thought would be harder to find.  A few caches brought us to some neat parks in town. And we found a fun cache under a bridge downtown. One of the caches that earned a favorite point was a micro hidden on this statue. Finding it went quickly, but signing the log took time and some ingenuity on our part.

Another fun cache was out in the cemetery at the old state mental institution. We parked a ways off and walked over on the dirt road.  As we were walking a minivan passed us on it's way to the cemetery.  We were surprised that anyone else would be out here and passed some time browsing the headstones until they left.  Once they had departed we quickly found the very unique cache, signed the log and started our walk back to the car.  Recently I had told Erin about playing on hay bales as a child and since there were some in the field we were walking past I boosted her up for a quick picture. After that we headed towards home.  It was a great day for a caching adventure.

Getting Carried Away In Bismack

This past weekend Erin and I took Lindzee out to Bismarck to do some geocaching.  Saturday morning Erin was doing some family stuff while Linzee and I snagged some first to finds. There was one we struggled with and even emailed the cache owner for a hint.  The hint didn't really give us anything other than what was on the cache page, but since it was on our way back to the truck we stopped by again and found it within 30 seconds.  Linzee and I laughed at how we had missed it the first time. After lunch we met up with Erin and decided to do a few caches in Mandan near the river.  Erin and I had been out on this particular trail before and grabbed most of the caches in the area, so the first cache we were going for was 1.4 miles from where we parked the truck.  The hike was nice, and after some bushwhacking we found a couple of caches. The trail continued out into the river and around the bridge, and there were caches on the other side so we continued our journey.  The caches on the south side of the bridge were a little more challenging, and we spent about half an hour trying to get into a locked cache. We even called the cache owner and confirmed we had the right combination, but the lock just wouldn't open.  When we finished with that it was a bit later than what we'd planned and the girls wanted to see if we could hike out to the south and have Erin's dad give us a ride to the truck.  Lindzee put in a bunch of work figuring out where we were, where we needed to go, and directions for Erin's dad.  After another half mile of hiking and a bit of waiting on the side of a road Erin's family showed up to give us a ride back to the truck.  They said they hadn't been to the part of Mandan where they picked us up, or where the truck was.  It's amazing the places geocaching takes you to.  After our adventure we hit up Mackenzie River for supper. Stacey seemed disappointed in her chicken sandwich, but the rest of us enjoyed our food. After supper we grabbed a few more caches and brought Erin to the other cache we had missed earlier in the day.  After another search we still couldn't find it so we went home to log caches.  I emailed the cache owner and she updated the cache page with a picture and a better hint.  From the picture I knew exactly where it was, and we decided to go grab one last first to find to end the day.  15 minutes later we had found it, signed the log and were driving away. The coords were about 50 feet off which is why we hadn't made the find earlier.  It was nice being able to find this after all of the searching we did earlier.

2013 Vacation Day 10

Saturday morning we woke up in our own beds and started unpacking all of our stuff from our trip. Inspired from our meal at Va Bene I recreated the pizza with a bit of a twist of my own for lunch.  It turned out fantastic. When we finished eating we headed off to the Red River Valley Fair to see John perform with his band.  It was his first public performance and he did very well. After he played we spent a little bit of time exploring the fair until the Deltener boys performed.  We enjoyed the show and the chance to talk with Kelly and Justin.  I was very surprised to see his crazy old mountain man style beard.  On our way back home we stopped at big lots for some Jolly Rancher pop that we had discovered on vacation.  I was glad to see they had it, even it they were missing some flavors. We were bumming around the house preparing for a lazy evening when I got a call from the Pirates.  They were in town caching and just wanted to give us crap for one of our hides.When I talked to them, they suggested grabbing supper, so we met art Marco's Pizza. The service was great and we had a great time talking with everyone.  The kids are all super talkative and we could have stayed there all night chatting. This wound up being the perfect ending to our 2013 vacation.

2013 Vacation Day 9

Friday morning, our last morning in the bed and breakfast started like the others.  I would wake up a bit before Erin and catch up on email, eventually she woke up and breakfast was delivered. After breakfast we didn't have much reason to stick around so we packed up and hit the road.  The plan was to camp at Saint Croix state park for a night or two and then head home.  On our way out of town we stopped by Target to pick up another phone charger since the one we had was acting a bit flakey.  From there we went to Jay Cooke state park to grab the multicache there.  The hike was beautiful, and we both decided that we should come back someday to camp here. After the hike and cache we hit the road again on our way to Moose Lake state park and another multi cache. Just before getting to the park we found a restaurant called the Lazy Moose and stopped for lunch.  The food was fairly good, and the view was fantastic, looking out over a river with a small island on it.  Our caching adventure in Moose Lake ended prematurely because of mosquitos and previous logs mentioned we'd be getting into some messy mud.  From there another state park, this time Banning State Park.  The park looked nice, but it was getting hot out and the bugs were really bothering us.  After finding the cache we decided we'd be happier heading for home instead of camping.  On the way back we stopped at 3 more state parks for the avian adventure multi caches, Father Hennipin, Mille Lacs Kathio, and Charles Lindberg. It was a lot of fun visiting so many state parks in one day and it was nice to find so many multi caches.  As the sun was going down and we were nearing Detroit Lakes we approached a thunderstorm.  We were lucky to avoid most of the rain from it, and it appeared to be going past us, so we stopped for a late supper at Perkins.  After supper when we hit the road again round 2 of the storm rolled through.  The hard rain wasn't the most enjoyable to drive through, especially where there was construction on highway 10, but we made it home safely from our trip.

2013 Vacation Day 8

Gooseberry Falls

After dealing with the parking nightmare that Duluth was we decided to get out of town and head to Gooseberry Falls for some hiking and geocaching. After eating breakfast I loaded up the Garmins and we set out on our day trip.  When we arrived in Gooseberry I discovered that I didn't have as many caches loaded up as I thought I did.  We made the best of it, and found the ones in the park and had a very enjoyable hike. When it started to heat up we decided to cache along the way back to Duluth.  Oddly enough a few of the caches we found had just been found by a friend from Moorhead just a few days prior to our visit.  It was neat seeing a familiar name on the log sheet.  When we made it back to Duluth it was supper time.  We went to the black bear for supper.  The view from the restaurant was nice and the food was good, but I was a little disappointed.  After supper we called it an early night since we were both pretty tired.

2013 Vacation Day 7

The view from a cache along the Superior Hiking Trail

We woke up and bummed around until 9:00 when breakfast was delivered.  It was pretty good except for the ham in the eggs.  Seriously, canadian bacon is NOT bacon!  After breakfast grabbed a few caches on our way over to Superior, WI to grab a cache, and play some mini golf.  While not nearly as cool as Pirates Cove we still had fun playing and I recorded another win.  From there we decided to head back to Canal park to shop and checkout the downtown area.  This wound up be way harder then it should have been.  I missed a turn and then couldn't get back to where we wanted to be.  Eventually we found a parking garage and decided to park there before discovering they were full after circling the lot a few times. Finally we made it back to canal park and had lunch at Grandma's again.  From there our wandering began.  There were a few moderately interesting shops in the area, but overall I wasn't too impressed.  We walked over in the skyway to downtown a found the skyway to be depressing.  It seemed to have a lot of closed down shops and vacancies. I wonder if the skyway is getting any return on the investment they made putting it in.  There was a car show/street fair going on downtown.  After that we returned to the truck and decided that we weren't all that hungry for supper.  Instead of going someplace fancy for our anniversary we stopped by a grocery store and got some donuts and milk and went back to the B&B. It was an oddly appropriate way to cap off the day.

Caching Trip to Grand Forks

Erin had been able to get a Monday off, so we had a long weekend.  We've known about it for a while now, but didn't really make any plans. As it approached we came up with the idea of heading to Grand Forks to do a little caching. I looked for a fun place to stay, but Grand Forks doesn't seem to have anything like that, so I wound up booking a hotel through Priceline.com the day before we left. Since we didn't really care where we stayed Priceline seemed to be a good option.  I'll definitely keep it in mind for future trips.

Saturday morning we headed out and took a roundabout way North, grabbing some caches along the way. We made it to Grand Forks early afternoon, and just grabbed a snack since we were meeting some friends for supper.  After ice cream at Culvers we hit a couple more caches until we could check in. I had a headache, so we stopped by Target to pick up some drugs.  After that we went back to Hanging At The Pepper, a cache we had missed on previously.  With the hint we picked up a few weeks back we made the find easily. Then we headed into East Grand Forks to do the Avian Adventure cache there. At the first location someone overheard us talking about coordinates and asked us about caching.  We probably spent 10 minutes getting to know this other cacher and swapping stories before continuing to find the rest of the cache. From there we cleaned up East Grand Forks as much as possible. There was something going on down by the river, so we skipped a few caches near there.  After that a few more in Grand Forks before hitting up Pizza Ranch for supper with the Pirates.

Matt, Zoa, and the kids have a frantic sort of energy about them that always makes get togethers fun. Over supper we traded a few stories and told each other about how the day had gone. After we finished eating we decided to grab a cache.  Erin and I aren't much for night time caching, but the pirates seem to do their best work when the sun goes down.  Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity to have 18 eyes looking for a cache we decided to go for one that was a bit tricky. Oliver was the first to spot the cache, when we found it we discovered that although the cache description was perfectly accurate it was also misleading.  That sort of misdirection makes caching fun.  From there we walked over to a cache that they had found before, but that some of the kids hadn't seen.  Again this one was tricky, especially with the sun already set. Simon pointed out that the cache wasn't in the right spot, and after he put it back, the rest of us made the find quickly. We walked back to the vehicles, and talked some more before finally calling it a night.

The next morning Erin and I had breakfast in the hotel.  Nothing special, but it wasn't bad.  We tried for a few caches in town before heading North. Instead of a cache I found a family of mice at one location. I was leaning in to look behind a tree and under some bark when they startled me.  We decided to move on after that. I was able to solve Larry's Cache with an item that we had in the car.  I felt really good about figuring out how to get into that one. After that we headed out of town to the geocaching Mecca that is Gilby North Dakota.  Erin and I had gone last year and found about half of the caches in that area and were excited to go back.  Trycacheus puts a lot of thought and effort into all of his hides. We had a great time finding unique and exciting caches, but got a bit tired of solving a cryptex to sign some of the logs.  We also discovered that very few of his caches are as easy as they look. After clearing out the caches in that area, and adding a few new towns for a challenge cache in Fargo we headed back to Grand Forks for a few caches near UND.

When we finished caching for the day we hit up a grocery store to grab a few items to bring over to Matt and Zoa's farm. They had invited us to stop by for supper on our way home. Since we had GPS coordinates finding their place was easy.  When we got there the boys had setup some geocaches on the farm they wanted us to find. We got a tour of the farm, and found some very challenging caches.  After that Annie showed us the animals. Since I'm the typical city kid that doesn't know much about these different animals, I found this all very interesting. After that we had supper and chatted until Erin and I needed to hit the road and head for home.  It was a great weekend.

2013 Vacation Day 6

Again we awoke to the sound of raindrops on the tent, not many but enough to let us know what was coming.  It was a bit early to be waking up on vacation, but we had looked at the weather the night before and rain was in the forecast. Without much talking we both started packing up our stuff.  With as many storms as we've dealt with camping we've gotten rather good at tearing down in a hurry and about 15 minutes after we started everything was packed up in the truck.  The heavy rain was still a ways out so our stuff was just a little damp. With nothing left to do in the park we headed out.  Our first stop was the rest area for bathrooms, and to get the Garmins loaded up with new caches.  After that we started off in the general direction of Duluth.  We found a place to eat in Brainerd that seemed to have a number of elderly regulars and had breakfast.  After that we hit the road with the intention of caching all the way to Duluth.  By now the heavy rain had caught up to us and after stopping a few times and getting wet we decided we'd saving the caching for Duluth instead stopping in the small towns along the way. When we arrived in Duluth we stopped at the visitor center at the top of the hill.  I think the view would have been amazing, but the rain and fog prevented us from seeing much beyond the windows. We decided to head to Grandma's for lunch since that was one of the places we were both looking forward to.  Lunch was fantastic even if the weather wasn't.  After lunch we tried to do some caching, but the parking meters all over town had us discouraged.

Our room at the B&B

Eventually 3:00 rolled around and we could check into the Firelight Inn.  When we checked in we got a tour of the mansion, since we were the only guests at the time we got to see the other rooms.  I was happy that our room, the Superior Suite appeared to be the best.  We brought our stuff up to the room, and bummed around for a bit before heading downstairs to figure out where we wanted to go for supper.  The bed and breakfast had a number of menus from around the area that we looked through before narrowing the selection down to just a few. One of the owners, Joy came out and we talked through our selections before deciding on a place I had found online, Va Bene.  Erin had seen a pizza in the menu that peaked her interest. It had pear, gorgonzola cheese and candied walnuts. I ordered a pasta with shrimp and onion.  My pasta was good, but Erin's pizza was far better. Fortunately she shared with me.  After supper we returned to the B&B and relaxed before bed.

2013 Vacation Day 5

The next morning the rain had stopped and it was looking fairly nice out.  We had breakfast at camp and then set out for some more geocaching from the bikes along the Paul Bunyan Trail.  We did find a bunch of caches, but we typically do better so it was a little frustrating.  Eventually the heat and bugs got to be too much and we headed back to the truck.  It happened to be around lunch time and I had no problem talking Erin into going back to Rafferty's for pizza.  Lunch was a good as what we had the previous night and after that we went to Pirates Cove for 36 holes of mini golf.  I dominated the first 18 holes, and Erin squeaked out a victory in the second 18, but overall I won by a few strokes.  The course was a lot of fun with it's pirate theme.  There was a dungeon in a cave that had a motion sensor that played an audio track of a prisoner whenever someone looked in, and there was a cannon that fired periodically causing an air driven splash in a pond.  One of the holes was even on a small pirate ship.  When we had finished golfing we decided to take in another movie, Man Of Steel.  We both enjoyed the movie, despite Batman being was cooler than Superman. When the movie was over neither of us was hungry so we headed back to camp.  When we arrived we found the stakes I had lent our neighbor the previous night on our picnic table, as well as some left over firewood that he had.  It was a nice surprise. We also had some new neighbors in that same spot, an older couple who came over to introduce themselves. Tom and Lorena were from Canada on a several week trip to Colorado and back.  We invited them over to our campfire and sat around sharing stories until it got dark and was time for bed.

Sometimes the fun isn't in the cache

Thursday night Erin was having some friends over, so I was on my own for a cache. After the 1 year streak of finding a cache everyday I still haven't given up and I'm hoping to make it through August.  The cache I chose to go for was about 5 miles North of Argusville on highway 81.  Definitely a bit of a drive, but from the satellite view I could tell there was a place to park and there shouldn't be anyone around to chase me away. Arriving at the approach I parked and started my search.  I figured it would be on the small sign near some power equipment, but after looking all over I knew it had to be somewhere else.  I looked over the power equipment before spotting the cache, not on the equipment, but near it.  The cache was well hidden and I felt lucky to have found it.  I signed the log and headed for home.

I got on the interstate heading south and was almost to Harwood when I heard a loud noise and the steering felt odd.  Pulling over the the side of the road I poked my head out and saw that the front driver's side tire didn't look much like a tire anymore and smelled a bit like burned rubber.  I was close to a bridge and was able to back up and angle myself to get a bit more room between the car and traffic. Damn, this sucks. Almost on autopilot I got out and looked in the trunk for a spare.  I'm not that handy and didn't really have any idea what I was doing.  The in the compartment with the tire was some rudimentary instructions on what to do.  I knew the jack needed to be in a specific spot to actually lift the car, but wasn't quite sure.  Crawling around I found what appeared to be a good spot to put the jack.  It wasn't.  I looked again, and found a better spot and repositioned the jack, this time the car was actually lifting. It was progress.  After getting it jacked up I figured out how to get the tire off.  I needed to lift the car a bit more to get the spare tire to fit, and once it was on I tightened the lug nuts in the order described in the owners manual.  I was feeling good about what I had been able to do, knowing it wasn't that much of an accomplishment but being proud nonetheless.  I packed up the jack and tire iron as well as the remains of the tire and headed for home again. Distrustful of the spare tire, and my handy work I kept the speed very low on the way home.  It was a nerve wracking drive but eventually I made it home safely. So much for just a quick park and grab.

2013 Vacation Day 4

Sunday morning was sunny and beautiful. We debated going into town for Sunday brunch after our bad experiences with restaurants in town the previous day and decided to chance it.  There was a local place that had a bunch buffet that sounded good.  We arrived a few minutes before they opened at the parking lot was completely empty. When they finally opened we decided since we were here we'd give it a shot.  When we walked inside there was no one around.  We waited a bit and finally someone noticed we were there.  I asked if they were open and they said yes and seated us.  It was really weird having a giant buffet table loaded with food with just the two of us there, but the food was good. It was a good mix of breakfast and dinner items and Erin and I both wound up eating a bit too much.  It was nice finding a restaurant that didn't suck after the previous day.  After brunch we hit up the Paul Bunyan Trail for some geocaching.  We cached a couple of miles of the trail before deciding it was too hot and we needed to do something else. After returning to the trucks and packing up the bikes we didn't have any idea what we wanted to do other then get out of the heat. Fortunately the trail head was close to the movie theater and we decided to watch Despicable Me 2.  It was a good movie, and the theater was cool.  After the movie we wandered around the  nearby mall while trying to settle on a place to eat. We had come up with a few ideas, but I had noticed a pizza restaurant in the mall and was trying to talk Erin into going there.  She thought pizza sounded good, but wasn't sure about this place.  We walked into a store and asked where the best place was in town for pizza and the clerk answered without hesitation Rafferty's, the place in the mall.  Erin was finally convinced to give it a shot.  We had some onion strings to start with, and they were great.  I had a small pepperoni pizza and Erin had the Lucky Chicken pizza.  It was a little odd because it had Lingonberries on it but she really liked it. I enjoyed my pizza as well. We were 2 for 2 on picking restaurants today!  After supper we headed back to camp and had another fire.  As we sat around the fire we noticed some woodchucks scampering around the area.  We tossed out some licorice, but they ignored that.  Then we tossed out some popcorn and they loved that.  They would timidly dance out from the tall grass and grab a piece and start chomping away.  It was very cute.  After a while someone pulled in a neighboring campsite on a motorcycle. Within a couple of minutes we could hear the rumble of thunder so we went over and offered to help set up. Our neighbor was camping with a hammock and had a tarp to throw over the top, but nothing to stake it down with.  I lent him some stakes and we got things tied down just as it started to rain.  I put out the fire after that and it was off to bed.

2013 Vacation Day 3

From Erik: "What is the sound of one hand clapping"
 and "I guess this is Minnesota naughty"

Saturday morning we woke up around 8:30 to the sound of rain. We had some muffins we brought along from home for breakfast and decided that we would cache from the truck today instead of biking the Paul Bunyan Trail. On our way out of the park we decided to try for the multicache again.  This time I had the 98% DEET bug spray that helped tremendously.  With the right coordinates we quickly found the cache to start off the day. Just outside the park is a visitor center that had a cache, so we stopped for that and I was inspired to take a picture of Erin and Paul Bunyan. I wonder how many other people have a similar picture? From there we drove into Brainerd cache along the way until lunch time.  At the information center we had picked up some brochures about local restaurants and decided to try the Sawmill Inn.  I figured I couldn't go wrong with ordering pancakes in a place called the Sawmill Inn, but I was mistaken.  Erin's food wasn't fantastic either, but it filled us up and we were back to caching in the rain again. After getting most of the caches around town that weren't on the bike trail we decided to go to the Bolder Tap for supper. From what we had read about it, they specialized in burgers and seemed like it would be a great place.  Unfortunately it didn't live up to our expectations.  We ordered cheese curds, but I don't think they have any idea what cheese curds are supposed to be. What we got were large blocks of a not particularly great cheese that had been fried.  Ok, I could have read the menu a little more closely and avoided this, I'll take some blame.  Then the burgers came out and they were awful. I think it was because their meat wasn't very good quality, but it's hard to pin down exactly where things went wrong with it.  It's rare that I don't finish a hamburger, but this one wasn't worth eating.  Wow, we had done a great job of picking restaurants.  After supper we came back to camp and got a fire going.  The strong bug spray seemed to do the trick, and we sat around the fire snacking until we decided to get some sleep.

3rd Anniversary Run and Caching Trip to Jamestown

Matt, Rick, Erik, Ray, Jon
Erin, Cassie, Heather, Lynette, Kristy, Rachel, Connie

The day started early, I rolled out of bed just a bit before Erin's alarm went off.  We had been out the previous night watching the boys and neither of us wanted to be up at this hour.  We got dressed and I checked on the carmel rolls.  They were rising nicely.  It wasn't long before people started showing up and our kitchen filled up with the goodies that everyone brought for breakfast.  When everyone was finally here we headed back outside for Rachel to take our picture before the run. I wanted to get back early to ensure the camel rolls were coming our of the oven in time, so I biked.  The pace the group found was faster then I was anticipating.  It was fortunate I wasn't running or I would have slowed everyone down.  I biked along talking to Matt until the route turned back towards the house.  Then I hustled home and started baking. I probably should have headed back sooner, or the group should have run a little more slowly.  Either way they were back a little sooner then I was planning on.  Erin handed out our homemade race medals and the group came in for breakfast. We had fresh carmel rolls, an egg bake, bacon pastries, orange juice and fruit. Breakfast was great, and it was run catching up with everyone.  Heather's husband Doug showed up with their daughters, and I got to hold Violet for a bit.

Donvil, Ellis, and Former Hawkeye at the event

After breakfast we cleaned up, and Erin took care of the cats we're watching while I loaded up the Garmins for a road trip out to Jamestown. The first cache we tried for was in Valley City.  It was one that I had looked for previously and missed.  This time we were determined to make the find.  After looking all over a evergreen tree I finally made the find. From there we headed south down to highway 46 and cleaned up some more caches we had missed on.  We had nice weather and were finding everything, much more fun then our recent vacation.  There was a high terrain rated cache that we stopped at, but we had been fortunate to bring a telescoping marshmallow toasting fork which made quick work of retrieving and returning the cache. After cleaning up most of the caches south of Jamestown we headed north in to town for the event.  I was thinking we'd be a bit late, but we made it right on time. We had fun talking with the other geocachers and the food was good.  While we were eating Chad got a call from the pirate family saying they were out of gas on the interstate.  After finishing his meal Chad was going to run some gas out to them, and I decided to tag along.  We borrowed a gas can and headed out to find the pirates. As we drove Chad showed me a text from them with their coordinates and a brief cache description.  I enjoyed the joke they made out of their situation. We found them and got them refueled and made it back to the cafe in time for door prizes.  Erin got a matchstick container and I got a christmas themed towel. We chatted a while longer before heading out with Chad to get a couple of caches. The first one we tried for was a harder difficulty cache that required a bit of a hike.  We made a wrong turn and did some bushwhacking, but made the find.  From there we made an easy find at the Pipestem dam office before deciding it was getting late and heading for home.  One the drive back I started kicking around ideas for some fun caches to place up North. It was a great way to spend our Saturday.

2013 Vacation Day 2

The next morning when I got up I was treated to some new logs on the Monopoly series.  Our favorite pirate family had been in town for the fourth and had been finding them.  Unfortunately I should have added a bit of information to the final cache to help clarify something because they had been unable to find it.  It was still lots of fun reading about their adventures from the previous night. I started packing up the truck and we were on the road to adventure shortly after 8:00am.  Around 10:00 we stopped in Wadena, MN to do some geocaching.  There is a bike trail from a park in town to a nearby golf course that has caches every tenth of a mile or so.  After unpacking the bikes we set out to see what we could find.  Our first stop was a big old willow tree with a high terrain cache.  We circled the tree for a bit before I tried unsuccessfully to climb the tree.  When I came back down I talked Erin into giving it a shot.  She was able to get up into the tree, but couldn't find the cache.  It was a bit disappointing but we decided to move on. On the bike path we weren't having much more luck. I think we missed about a quarter of what we tried for. Sometimes Mosquitos would drive us off, other times we put in a good search and just couldn't make the find.  After we finished up on the bike trail we decided to grab lunch in town at Harvest Thyme. The service was a bit slow and the food was just ok.  I had some pepperjack mac and cheese with bacon, and Erin had a salad.  After lunch we drove around Wadena grabbing a few caches before hitting the road again. We stopped every time there was a cache along the highway and even found a place to grab some ice cream along the way. Eventually we made our way to Crow Wing State Park and set up camp. After getting things setup we decided to try for the Avian Adventure multicache in the park.  We drove to where it started and set out to make the find.  We didn't notice there were 2 sets of coordinates on the sign starting us off and thought it was odd how this cache seemed to have a historical theme to it.  The mosquitos were awful and the heat was unpleasant, but we found the final.  It seemed odd there was no log to sign, but we were happy to be heading back to the safety of the truck. When we got back Erin hit up the bathroom and I checked the sign to discover we had gone after the wrong thing.  With the bugs as bad as they were we decided to try for the cache again another time. We drove back into town to grab some supper and wound up at Bonanza which was surprisingly good before stopping to pick up a hatchet and some stronger bug spray. That night our neighbors in the campground stayed up late and kept us up until around 1:00am with their loud stories before I went and talked to them.  After that they quieted down and we were able to get some rest.

2013 Vacation Day 1

The fourth of July started off somewhat lazily, no alarm clocks but I was still up early. I lounged around and checked email and realized that in addition to our 19 caches that were published the previous night, another cache had been published in Moorhead.  I checked the cache page and no one had logged it. When Erin finally rolled out of bed I checked it again and still no logs.  I told here and we decided to start the morning with an attempt at a first to find.  We thought our chance were pretty good for this one. It was a holiday, the person hiding the cache was the one who normally beats us to caches so he wouldn't be logging this one, and people out for FTFs might go after one of ours.  When we pulled into a nearby parking lot we had the place to ourselves and a minute later we were signing the blank log.  What a great way to start our vacation!  This cache marked day 367 of our consecutive day streak.  After grabbing the days cache we hit up the grocery store on the way home to get supplies for buffalo chicken dip. After making the dip and lounging around for most of the day we headed over to Cassie's place for fireworks. Around 10:00 the bugs got to be too much for me and we headed home.

2013 Vacation Day 0

Paul from work sitting in front of us.

The past few years Erin and I have been taking a week long vacation in early July. It started before we got married and has continued ever since.  This year we kicked things off earlier than most years on July 3rd with a Barenaked Ladies concert in North Fargo. While I was waiting for Erin to get off work I put the finishing touches on a series of caches that we had been working on with a Monopoly theme. Just before we left I submitted them for review. When we got to the ballpark we found a place to sit and Erin went off in search of food. While I was waiting I spotted a buddy from work who was playing around with a quadcopter that he had recently purchased. It was neat seeing how small and maneuverable it was. One of Erin's coworkers (our geocaching buddy Lindzee) met us at the concert with another friend and they sat with us. The concert started off with a lone singer whose name escapes me. He was really funny, and towards the end of his set he got a few of the Barenaked Ladies to come out and play with him. After that the band Guster played. Erin and I weren't that impressed with them, but there was at least 1 song that I enjoyed. Linzee didn't seem to enjoy them all that much either.  Around the time that they were playing our Monopoly caches were published and I think she was more interested in going to look for them.  Finally Guster finished and we moved on to the main act. The Barenaked Ladies put on a good show with playing most of their hits and a few new songs. For me the most interesting moment was when they started playing the theme from the Big Bang Theory, it really clicked for me just who was playing for us. I really loved the show and wish it had been longer, or at least more of the Barenaked Ladies and less of Guster.  After the show we packed up our chairs and headed towards home. On the way we decided to stop at Applebees for half price appetizers. I'm not sure we had the right wing sauce or if it was our imagination, but the food just wasn't as good as normal that good that night.

Homemade Race Medals Part 3

After painting and drilling

For this years race medals we decided to use round pieces of wood from Michaels. We painted them with a blue sparkly spray paint left over from a previous project and drilled holes for the ribbon.  We found a silver cord that was elastic, which is working great for the ribbon.  We finished them off with text in silver sharpie. These were much faster to produce than our first homemade race medals or even our second anniversary race medals. They could have been a bit larger to include more text, but I think they turned out well.

The silver elastic

The finished product

Prop Me Up...

This past weekend Erin and I went to a geocaching event at Turtle River State Park on Saturday with Lindzee and Ellis.  It was a beautiful summer day with the sun shining and a bit of a breeze.  On the way to the park we stopped near the Grand Forks Air Force Base to pick up a cache.  Despite the misleading hint we did manage to find this one.  After arriving at the park we checked in at the geocaching tent and greeted a few other cachers we knew before setting out to find the permanent caches in the park.

The first cache in the park was a quick find, there were some young cachers around, and I think they saw me grab it, but I tried to act as inconspicuous as possible.  After that we headed deeper into the park on some dirt trails.  It was a little wider than single track, but not by much.  When we were sheltered by the trees the mosquitoes attacked.  The bug spray we had put on didn't seem to help all that much.  We rushed down the path, only slowing to navigate around some muddy areas.  The path seemed to loop around the second cache, so Ellis and I bushwhacked to make that find.  Then we headed off to the next cache.  This time following the main path took us the wrong way.  When we stopped to evaluate our situation, Ellis was attacked by ants.  When we backtracked we found where we should have turned.  This trail took us through some wetlands. Erin managed to keep her feet dry, but the rest of us took on a little water. Once we were out of the wet spot and on high ground we made the find fairly quickly.

From there we headed back to where we had parked to grab a drink and stop by the bathroom. The next cache was on an old road and after walked there I found the cache easily, however it was a cryptex.  Lindzee quickly figured out the combo from the cache hint and we signed and were on our way once more.  The last two caches in the park were a ways off from where we were so we decided to drive there. After parking we walked down a paved trail to the first of the two remaining caches.  When we got near ground zero we found a trail into the woods that we followed, and the cache was soon found.  As we were signing the log we heard someone ask "Did you find it?". I turned around to see Jim heading down the trail towards us.  This was the second time he's caught us in the act.  He hadn't found the last cache we were heading to, so he tagged along.  The last find was another quick one.  After giving Jim a ride back to the information booth we headed out of the park.

By this time we were fairly hungry so we headed to Larimore for a late lunch.  We stopped by the bar in town, but were told the kitchen was closed and pointed to the drive in as a place to get some food.  After ordering Ellis and Lindzee found a number of ticks. Most of us got shakes with our meal which were very good, however the food wasn't all that fantastic.  We had also ordered way more then we probably should have.  After we ate, we grabbed a few caches in town and headed home for the day.

Sunday morning Erin and I got up and ran with Erik and Connie. My legs were hurting, so after 2 miles I left the group to do some walking. As I waited for the them to finish up, I killed time by running intervals.  The starting and stopping and differing paces seemed to loosen my legs up, and when we finished the run I had close to the same mileage that everyone else did.  After the run we went home, cleaned up, and packed up the bikes for another caching trip to the Central Lakes Trail.  This was my third trip out to this trail.  We drove out to a boat landing near Evansville that I has stopped at on my previous trip and started caching where I left off.  We went about 3 miles out on bikes and then found caches on the way back to the truck.  The first 3 miles went well, but after that we were getting hungry.  We decided to see what Evansville had in the way of food.  We found a place called the Backroads Steakhouse.  We sat in the bar and ordered some burgers. While we waited an older couple had come in and was talking to the bartender about a friend that had recently died. When our food arrived a country sound about prop me up beside the jukebox if I die started playing. It seemed a little odd, but everyone grieves in their own way.  The food here was way better than what we had the previous day.  We will definitely have to come back.  After lunch we did a bit more geocaching, before deciding it was too hot to keep going. Aside from the bug bites, scrapes and poison ivy it was a great weekend.