On New Year’s Day, 2008, we took some time to do some ‘treasure’ hunting. The D’Elia family turned us on to the fun of GeoCaching. [Geocaching is an activity where someone (the hider) hides something (usually in tupperware) and publishes the latitude and longitude to a website. The seekers then get the coordinates off the website and use a GPS device to find the cache. Most caches consist of a small number of trinkets and a log to sign.] Since we are trying to keep up with the D’Elias, we had to get in on the act and we received a GPS device from my parents for Christmas. I downloaded 5-6 geocaches from the website (there are ~25 within 5 miles of our home [N 34 23.889 W 119 31.257] in Carpinteria) and we went exploring. The first one we looked for sounded very easy to find, and so I had hope that we would start off on a high note. I let Max hold the device and keep us going in the right direction, he liked following the little black arrow. The device has about a 13′ accuracy so we began looking around for likely hiding spots. I had to duck down to reach the container and Lucy came up behind me. When I pulled up the container, I popped her in the nose with my elbow and gave her a bloody nose that streamed down her face. She immediately wiped her nose with her sleeve and red streaks appeared on her cheeks. Toby picked her up and got blood all over the front of her shirt. Luckily we had a Kleenex and within a few minutes the blood stopped. Lucy did not like having the tissue plug in her nostril. I took Lucy back to the car and Toby signed the log of our first geocache and re-hid it for the next person to find. Once Lucy had calmed down, we decided to try for another one on the other side of town. This cache was not so specific, so we spent about 5-10 minutes hunting in the grass within our 13′ radius. We finally found it and everyone had a good time! We will definitely become serious geocache-ers in the future. It is a great family activity.

Found It

Beautiful Geocachers

Update : I looked at the entry for ‘Quiet Marsh’ and it is very specific, I just missed the details.

On Wednesday, 26 December, I took the day off work so that we could have a leisurely drive home and not have to rush home on Christmas day. Toby wanted to see the snow that day, so we decided to take a detour up to Frazier Park / Mt. Pinos. We had a good time driving up to Frazier Park. Lucy talked about the snow every couple of minutes on the drive. The guy at the Frazier Park visitor center gave us a map and said that there was snow about 15 minutes up the mountain. We drove up the mountain and started seeing snow. We found a turn off and parked the car to walk around. It was cold. It was very cold. At the visitor center, it was chilly, but we were 3000 ft higher in elevation and there was no ‘chilly’ at 8000 ft. It was cold. We piled out of the car to get to the warm clothes we packed. Lucy immediately started whining that she was ready to go home. But we had driven all this way and Lucy was going to have fun. The dogs jumped out of the van and quickly got their ‘snow legs’ as they splayed around. The snow was old and fairly packed, so there was no fear of sinking. I don’t think Petey had a good time, although Ginger seemed happy to sniff around for food. We found a cracked plastic sled that someone had abandoned and Max had a great time riding in it until he tipped over and slid down the hill on his belly, with his shirt riding up on his chest. Toby had to pee, of course, but they didn’t have public restrooms in the wilderness, so she dropped trow amongst the trees. No flash photography was allowed during this show. Max and I had a mini snowball fight, mostly ice-balls. We were all glad to get back into the van and down to the town again where we got hot coco from the local diner.

That is my fake smile you are seeing

More fake smiles