Geocaching Adventures

As part of a Girl Scout badge, I took Cammie out to find Geocaches last Sunday.  I find it really interesting that they have this badge for geocaching--a technological treasure hunt--which may be gone in a few years' time, but they have omitted just about every fiber art in existence until the girls reach high school.  However, while we have the opportunity, and since this really isn't something that can be done in huge groups, Cammie and I went on a walking adventure together in the neighborhood and found two of the three caches we went looking for.  The third was hiding a little too well and although I have since gotten more hints, the weather has not been conducive to making another attempt.  We sought out one more today but it was hiding too well and we were unable to uncover it.  It could be that because it's fall and there are leaves covering the cache, or maybe that the kids were not patient enough to wait for it to be found, especially in the rain.  I think I may just go out and find more by myself.  Since then, I went to another site and found a cute little cache that I will have to take her to later to complete her badge.  We also need to make a trade item to leave in a cache box, learn how to read the GPS tool on my phone, and help a travel bug move around to a new location.

Today I was concerned because I wanted to get a walk in, but it was raining rather hard, and while walking is beneficial exercise, I hate walking in the rain.  More than anything, I hate having wet socks and wet feet.  I ordered some new waterproof shoes from Lands End, but I can't get my feet into the shoe.  It's not that the shoe is too narrow or too short, but the actual hole to get my foot into this slip-on moc is TOO SMALL to get my foot in.  I have no idea how they managed to make a wide-width shoe that you can't fit your foot into the shoe opening.  Someone in the engineering department needs to have his head examined.  So I need to take it back to Sears and see if they can replace it.  Heck, I may have to take it to the Sears closer to Seattle since the nearest one is abysmally small.

However, I lucked out on the exercise front today since it has become a tradition for me to walk with the trick or treaters, and by some miracle, the clouds parted and the weather cleared.  We started out with just my three kids, and within a hundred yards or so, we picked up two neighbor girls, Miss K and Miss T.  Miss K is 9 and Miss T is 7, so they're pretty close in age to my younger kids.  Their grandma walked with us as we made our rounds, and about an hour in, Miss T decided she was done, so she and her grandma walked back up the hill.  We went a few houses further and Emma decided her feet hurt from the shoes she was wearing and had a large enough haul to satisfy her.  Ben, at almost the same moment, decided he was done as well.  They walked back to the house together.  So now it was just me, Cammie and Miss K.  They finished the loop around the neighborhood, filling their bags to the brim (OK, not quite to the brim for Cammie since she took an actual pillowcase from our closet...not something I would have recommended, but she had already started out before I realized what she had taken; next time, she can take a re-usable grocery bag to avoid damaging our pillowcases by dropping it frequently on the wet ground).  It took about 90 minutes to make the rounds and we were all exhausted by the time we got back.  I calculated that it was roughly 1 1/2 miles up and down the hills, so probably a grand total of 1 mile per hour, but a workout nonetheless.

Tomorrow I have nothing planned, so I may try to find a place to walk to find some geocaches--maybe around the lake, where I believe there are five hidden--and if I can find them, I'll take Cammie back there and make shorter work of the search by pointing her in the right direction and seeing if she can find them herself.  We'll also need to make some tradeables to put in the bins, or just some treasures to share with others.  I'm thinking maybe some yarn zombies or leaving some of the rubber bracelets that say Cure CF.  We bought a bunch of those things years ago with the intention of handing them out back when the rubber bracelets were trendy.  We gave a few away but we still have dozens in both kid and adult sizes.  In any case, I'll need to find larger caches and avoid the micros for a while.  They get frustrating trying to find them since they're usually about the size of a tube of lip gloss.  Maybe we'll go find one of the big 5 gallon buckets in the woods.