Mike’s Family Blog

A quick check in to say hello.

We’ve had a busy week around here and it’s going to get busier. I’ve only got two more weeks of summer holidays before school’s back in and I’m back to work. Weird. It’s not like going back to school after summers as a kid. For the most part, it’s been a productive summer and I’ve still managed to get some recreation time in, so it’ll be good to get back into a routine.

We ripped apart our cold storage room last week. With all the ad-hoc shelving in there, it was very cluttered, so we cleared it all out and essentially started from scratch. That was last week’s project. This week is to get a bit more organization going in the garage. Lots of fun.

Yesterday (Saturday) Lisa had to work, so Jonathan and I drove her so that we could have the car and then go hang out. We went out to Perkins for breakfast before hitting a couple of geocaches. Then it was home for a nap. After naptime and lunch, we got together with the Bottles and headed out to La Barriere park and went for a good walk while doing 4 more caches. That tired Jonathan out, I think as he didn’t stop running. How they manage to run non-stop without having to catch their breath is a mystery.

This afternoon, Lisa, Jonathan and I headed out for an hour to do a couple more caches. I took a couple of good photos of Jonathan holding the cache finds. Updates are in the gallery. July/August and Whiteshell Part 4 from last week. Enjoy!

Another Saturday out to the Whiteshell, tupperware co-ordinates plugged into the GPS and ready to hunt. Oh wait, but there’s a problem! Plan as we might, we just can NOT seem to make it out of the city before 10AM! Try as we might, it’s just not happening.

Today, we met for breakfast at 9am and were on our way with a quick stop to put some air in the tires. VERY good thing we did because I spotted a fish hook sticking out of the sidewall of one of the rear tires and it was leaking air when I tugged at it. Fortunately, there was a Fountain Tire and a Canadian Tire in the same parking lot. A check at both places revealed that it was busy. Off to a Mom and Pop to see if they were open. They weren’t, but an attendant on site repeated what Canadian Tire said, you can’t fix sidewall punctures. Drat.

Okay, back to both Tire places to see what they had and for how much. Fountain Tire was more expensive and they’d have to bring the tires in from a different location. Scratch that, we’ve got beach to get to! Off to Canadian Tire, they had a special on anyways. Long story short, we were on the road at 11:30am, $250 lighter in the pocket but sporting a pair of new tires.

So off to the beach and some caching. We were still determined that we were going to get a good day in. We had 16 caches on the list and by golly we were going to see how many we could accomplish.

After a quick lunch, Lisa, Jonathan, Bev, Isabelle and Laura were left behind at the beach and Ross and I were off hunting. We had already done one on the highway but now we were heading for some of the trails. Over the next 2.5 hours, we hit up 6 more, almost all were very quick finds. Either we’re getting better or the hides were easy. After the trails, we hit up 2 more really quick ones. At one point, I was so quick on the find that Ross hadn’t finished getting out of the car when I had it in my hands.

Back to the beach for a quick dip… well, at least Ross had time. Due to the leaky tire fiasco, we were shorter on time today so I had to wait until getting home to clean off. Supper was had at a good little local restaurant and we were then ready to head home… almost.

We needed to do a couple more caches before heading out. One was a, “I’ve gotta see this one!” A 5 gallon cache! Had to see what was in that one! The last was a pre-planned one so that Ross could drop a geocoin. A total of 11 on the day with no misses.

Plenty of fun was had by all. Pictures will be posted in the gallery, just not tonight cause it’s sleepy time now.  :)

Wow, what a day yesterday. More Geocaching and some beach time as well. We were out with the Bottles again this week. (I think I’ve hooked Ross on Geocaching.)

We started off with a stop at the Lily Pond and did the Lily Pond Triplet of caches. Those were fun and offered great views of the pond. And yes, there really are Lillies in the pond! Next, we headed to West Hawk Beach and after a quick lunch and time on the slides, we left Lisa and Bev with Jonathan and Isabelle at the beach.

Ross and I went off on one heck of a grueling hike… well, for a couple of guys who are out of shape, it was pretty tiring. McGillivray Falls was our destination and a 4.5K hike. The length wasn’t the issue, but it wasn’t easy terrain and a lot of ups and downs in elevation. We measured 50M from the parking lot to the highest elevation! The trail was well marked, but the back half wasn’t well travelled or cut back. But in the end, we found all 3 caches and took some great shots of the falls along the way.

Before we left for the Whiteshell, we did a stop at Costco so that I could pick up a hydration backpack.  Ross already had one.  Let me tell you, what a wonderful thing to have.  It was much better than trying to carry a water bottle in one hand and the GPS in the other.
Then it was back to the beach to cool off in the water. Jonathan choked on some water after watching Isabelle get dunked under after a 1, 2, 3 count. He looks at me and says two, three! So I asked him if he wanted to go under and he nodded yes. I asked if he was sure, he nodded yes. (I wasn’t feeling too comfortable about it, but hey, they’ve got to learn.) I told him he had to hold his breath and showed him and then I asked again if he wanted to go and if he was going to hold his breath. So on one, two three and a reminder to hold his breath, I put him down to the top of his ears. He came back up, brushed the water out of his eyes and I thought ‘wow, he did it!’. Then a big BURP! Followed by some coughing and we realized, nope, he didn’t. So, after coughing out whatever water he had swallowed and a few minutes of crying, he was fine. He just wanted Mommy.

After that, it was off for a bite of supper and one more cache on the cliffs overlooking the beach. This was Bev’s old summertime stomping grounds, so with Ross pouting a bit back at the cars, away I went with Bev. Probably a good thing on this cache too. Turned out that it was a popular evening set of trails from the campgrounds, especially for couples. So us looking like just another couple, we weren’t given a second look as we sat on a log casually keeping the cache out of sight. I think Ross and I would have drawn a bit more attention to the cache area than we would have liked.

So that was the end of another long day and we’re already looking forward to the next adventure.

No pictures within this post this time. I’m posting them all in the gallery.