Geocaching Shenanigans

Yesterday, The Boss (not to be confused with my wife, a different kind of boss, and not to be confused with my real boss) and I went geocaching in Kaposi Park in South St. Paul. We managed to find four caches out of the five. This one was our coup. It's called "Tunnel Vision" and somewhere in this picture (not necessarily visible) there's a cache hidden. We found it, officially making us the Second (and Third) To Find. And not because others hadn't been looking. The web site is littered with Did Not Finds. We spent a lot of time wandering around, pondering the area and the title. At one point, I climbed up over the tunnel arch, paranoid that I was going to slide off the side and fall 20-some feet and break my leg, if lucky. But embracing my inner monkey, I made it, and yelled, "I FOUND IT!" When The Boss came walking out of the tunnel, I pushed about 4 inches of fresh snow on his head.

We left for a while without finding it. Came back. Bumped into a couple of cachers and introduced ourselves as Juggle87 and NodToNothing, and then had an epiphany. I missed the cache the first time, even though I was in the right spot, and some fine second sweeping by The Boss grabbed it. I have a picture of the location, but I'm not going to post it. It was a fine trick. Too fine to give away to the likes of you.


Here's one of the other caches we found for which I will show a picture. I spent a few minutes trying to grab it wondering how in the hell anyone could get it if my arms weren't long enough, when I realized there was a suspicious stick nearby. A general rule of geocaching - when you can't reach it, look for a supicious stick. Here's The Boss with the cache.


And me with the cache. I have snowpants, boots, and four layers of upper clothing on. By the time we were done I was exhausted from clomping around in all that outerwear. I fell down once on a hill, and I can still feel the spot on my knee where I whacked a tree, but it held up after 28 miles on the trainer, so I'm going to assume I didn't chip a bone.


Eryn and I went out last week. We found a Third To Find, which was our best so far. After spending an hour looking for one in an ice skating rink that included the hint "in the winter you'll need an extraction tool" (?) we were happy to find at least one we could add to our list.


It is that small. Here's Eryn modeling the size compared to her head, which is roughly the size of a big cantaloupe. Later we went to play in the park and throw wet tennis balls at each other. The hill behind her in the picture (just past the trees) was so iced over she could sled down it on her butt.


One of the things that confused us while caching was this wall. There's no baseball diamond nearby. It's just sitting there. No marks, like it's a backstop for golf or batting practice. No instructions. No plaque, announcing it as the Something River Hills Memorial Wall and Performance Art Exhibit. It's just a wall. In the park. For no discernible reason. You can't see it in this picture, but just to (your) right is a small child who felt it was a good idea to take a sled down an ice hill much like the one I referred to in the last paragraph. Except his hill ended in a tar-covered trail. So did his ride. And his head. There was considerable bawling and Eryn noted, "That was stupid." Good girl.