We drove down to Long Lake, where there were a number of caches new to both of us, courtesy of our friend Shane (aka GeoLobo)...we bumped into him in our journeys (it's a small town) and caught up a bit, cached a bit, and found a couple of caches with him along before he had to go...
The next geocache we went after was a puzzle-cache, with a relatively simple puzzle to figure out in order to find the cache container...and while we were working out the coordinates, a float plane took off right in front of us...Ben thought it was awesome (so did I), and we both agreed that we'll have to go for a ride over the Adks sometime next summer...
After the plane took off, we wandered over to the cache location, and Ben selected...
and hurled perfect rocks into what is really a very long lake...
While he took care of important business, I found the cache, and we traded and logged our visit...
The next cache was brand-new...just hidden...completely unfound...which offered Ben and I the rare opportunity to be "First-to-Find" (FTF)...I enjoy being FTF because it often provides you with more of a challenge than finding the container after dozens of people have made their way to the given coordinates...there's also the possibility that the hider's coordinates are 100 feet off (although in this case, being Shane's cache, I knew they'd be on...so there is only the ever-present 20-40 feet variation between 2 different GPS receivers)...we found it pretty quickly, but not before I found this amazingly tiny toad taking his ease on a...wait for it...toadstool...while I don't know how he got up, I do know that moments after I took this picture, he leapt off the mushroom with a surprising and total lack of grace...landing on his head, and kicking his legs for about 5 seconds before righting himself and micro-hopping away from us...
Altogether, we found 6 geocaches today...a new personal record for Ben and I...
We had a superb lunch at the Long Lake Diner (LLD)...grilled cheese and apple juice for Ben...A bacon and blue-cheese burger with a side of exquisite sweet-potato fries and many beverages for dehydrated Daddy...I drove around town for awhile (which takes some doing, given the tininess of Long Lake) looking for the restaurant that Ben wanted to eat in...he was certain that he had enjoyed eating in a place called "Woods", but after we settled in at the LLD, he remembered that "Woods" was only his name for his favorite restaurant, which was in fact the LLD...because they have lots of pictures from tree identification books on the walls as trim...we enjoyed lunch...
After we were done caching for the day we went in search of a playground...and stuck gold over by the, incredibly oversized, Long Lake Central School (it's as big as LPHS, and Long Lake graduates something like 7-9 seniors each year...I think that K-12 are all in the same building, but still...). This one had all of the usual amenities that Ben looks for in a playground, but also had a climbing wall...Ben was a little freaked out at first, but after a demonstration by dad on the use of the handholds and footholds, he went up like a champ...once...
He was very proud to have done it, but stuck to the slides and ladders for the rest of our visit to the playground...we'll be back to this little gem again...I have to get more of those sweet-potato fries anyway...
All in all, a superb day! I have no idea what's on the menu for tomorrow...maybe a final canoe-trip of the season...we'll see
1 comment:
Ben: You are so fortunate to spend so much quality time with your Dad. You can't possibly know the priceless memories you are collecting. Jamie..thanks for sharing.
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