Geocaching Event

Ben and I went down to Long Lake this morning to a geocaching event being held by our friends, Shane and Doree...we found 7 caches and attended a great lunch at the Adirondack Hotel with lots of geocaching friends...we even won a pair of fabulous door-prizes...


Ben and I ran into our friend Lefty while heading into the woods to look for the first cache, and we ended up finding our first four together...


Ben started out the day charging through the snow, but the deep snow burned through lots of his (and my) energy...I ended up carrying him on my shoulders for the return trips on about 1/2 of our cache-hikes today...


It was a prefect day, about 20 degrees, blue sky, very little wind...a delight for geocaching with a 5 year old...


Ben loved the stuffed bear and moose-head at the Adirondack Hotel, where the meeting and lunch portion of the event was held...


Doree's awesome dog, Odin, attended the event and was the highlight of the day for Ben...


After lunch, we headed out with Doree and Odin to find a geocache hidden on nearby Pine Island on Long Lake...we walked across the ice to the island...the ice is thick enough to support the pick-up trucks of a number of idiots fishermen, who didn't want to bother with walking out to their fishing shacks...


After we were all done with geocaching for the day, we headed over to Ben's favorite part of Long Lake...the playground...he rallied and ran around in the snow for a while, and then climbed and slid and played in the playground for a bit before heading back to Lake Clear...


Based on the snow coverage of the playground, Ben was the first person in a while to enjoy the playground...he had a surprise when he got to the bottom of the various slides...


I did a run-around picture of us after we got all sweated-up running through the deep snow and playing "hurl the boy into the snowbank"...I won...


On the way out of town, a jerk came up behind us, impatient to get going...honking and flashing at us (even though we were driving at the speed limit and were in a no passing zone)...he zoomed by us on the way up a hill and cut us off a bit when an oncoming car made an appearance from around a turn...afterwards, I reminded Ben that the horn should only be used as a warning, and that lots of times people use bad words when they're scared like Daddy was...

I was almost too happy when we passed the jerk getting a ticket on our way into Tupper Lake...

We had a great day!!!