Saturday, July 22, 2006

Geocache

David and I (Adriel) went on a geocache adventure this last Sunday.

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache (pronounced /kæʃ/, or "cash") is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and "treasure", usually toys or trinkets of little monetary value.

From Wikipedia

This sounded like fun so we decided to give it a try. We started at geocaching.com and decided on a cache called "Tomb Raider" set in the Columbia Gorge.

Here's how it goes: Using the first set of coordinates we would be searching for a burned out tree with a tag, the tag has coordinates to a "tomb," the tomb then has a treasure map hidden in it, the treasure map would lead us to the hidden cache box.

Our only mistake was where we parked the car to start the hike. After 45 minutes of tromping through tall grass, crossing streams, and picking our way through blackberry bushes we finally came to... water.


Here, David using the GPS, points out that we needed to get across the water about 200 yards.

So, we tromped back through it all and to the car. Oh, there was another mistake, and that occurred when I dropped the camera in a stream as we were jumping from one side to another. (It's still sitting in a bucket full of silica gel to help get things dried out). We took a break and flew our kite which practically lifted us off the ground (which was quite fun!), packed up, and drove to a better starting point.

We spent the next few hours tromping back and forth on the island discovering the first, second, and third locations, and finally we were rewarded with the discovery of our "treasure." We signed the log book in the cache box, took a token item from the box, and headed back to our car.

We stopped at an ice cream shop at Cascade Locks on the way back home - that was the best ice cream I have ever had. I'm not sure if it was the ice cream itself or the pure exhausted satisfaction we were feeling after spending seven hours on our adventure - whatever the case it was a taste of heaven!

Here's a bunch more pictures of the adventure... right up to the point that the camera got ditched that is.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

We have mobility!

Miriam has been scooting for nearly a week now. Sometimes she seems to know just what to do and other times it is as if she is not sure exactly what moves will propel her forward. It is sort of a cross between an army crawl and a fish swishing back and forth. Pretty cute and getting faster every day.

David and Abigail are really enjoying gymnastics. Today is their third class and I have seen improvement already. It is fun to watch them learn new things and get better every day. Only three weeks until the start of school and things are nearly ready. I think this will be a great year.