Another Night Time Hike

But at least this time we were smart, and had brought flash lights. I just knew we were not going to need them, because we would be back at the car long before dark. I was wrong. But we did find out that it's way easier to hike in the dark when you actually bring flash lights. I think flash lights are going to be a obligatory item on our hiking supplies. Even if we know we won't need them :-)

So why were we out that late? As usual, life got in the way, it's amazing how life keeps doing that. In the morning, we had our very first official homeschool meeting for the new school year, so couldn't go geocaching then. Of course told every one about it, wanting to get some more people hooked on it :-) It was nice not to have the kids stuck in school, but be out playing in a park instead.

Cees had to go to a birthday party in the afternoon, so we had to wait for him to be picked up before going out. Then a friend had computer problems, which took a bit of time to resolve, followed by Kate accidentally pushing Tara into a wall. No, I don't know either how you accidentally can push some one into a wall, but Tara was very hurt and upset. We did finally manage to set out though, with one kid missing (Cees), but an extra kid instead Mesa, who we ended up with after the homeschool meeting.

They were all excited because we had two travel bugs to put into the cache. Sonic the Hedgehog and Tim's very first travel bug Gnome Girl. We found the trail head pretty easily, and set out caching. The trail wasn't too hard, just a few stream crossings, but it still took longer than I had expected. At first we forgot Sonic in the car, but we realized that before hiking too far, so I sent Tim back to get him. We finally made it to the cache area, but we had a hard time finding the cache. It was starting to get darker, but I just couldn't abandon the search now that we were so close.

Tim found the cache!!!! Under dead birch tree #67 or so. It's amazing how many birch trees there can be in just any part of the woods. So we had to spent some time taking stuff out, putting stuff in, and having a snack before heading back out. It was getting darker. And darker. Kate and Erik started crying, I think they remembered the more traumatic night time hike without flash lights, but with mud. We got out the flash lights before it was strictly needed, mostly to calm them down. It helped, and we did make it back to the car safely. The flash lights made all the difference, to make it a nice, relaxed night time hike, as opposed to a stressful one.

Yesterday, I did boring stuff like groceries and such, but today we went caching again! Went to Shelob's Lair where Cees dropped off his Spider Boy Travel Bug It was in the middle of nowhere, on the top of a mountain, so that meant hiking up, up, up, and did I mention up? The kids did great, and in the end Kate told me 'This was an easy hike, it wasn't even dark!' LOL. I didn't think it was that easy, but glad she disagreed, since almost all the caches here seem to be hidden on steep trails. I wonder why? ;-)

I had been really organized and had thrown lots of veggies / grains and tvp in the crockpot before I left, so I didn't have to cook dinner when I came home, it was done already. Yummy!