Friday, July 28, 2017

The Best Geocache Ever!

The dad had a meeting on the Mexican Gray Wolf ("Boring Howard Meeting") in Prescott, AZ.  I went along with him, and we had an enjoyable time.  The evening we got there, we went looking for geocaches near our hotel.  I logged a "Do Not Find," on one, and I quickly got an email from the owners of the cache urging us to look for "Raven's Labyrinth" while we were there in Prescott.  They gave us the cache number, so we looked it up.  It had over 400 "likes."  It has the most "likes" of any geocache in the US, and is second only to one other in the world.

It was a mystery cache, and it started in a certain park.  The only other clue we could figure out was that it was in a gray lock box, and that the year Prescott was founded would unlock the box.  So we went to the park and started walking down a trail.
We found this little kiosk where people can get free maps to the walking trails in this park.   It's called Acker Park. Then the dad got to looking around and he found a lock box on the wall of the kiosk.  We put in the date, and it opened up!  Inside was a key.  That's all.  Just a key, and there weren't any instructions in it.

As we looked around, we noticed that the back of the display case for the maps had a lock.  We tried the key.  Voila!  It opened!  We lifted the lid up, and we found this labyrinth.  Immediately, a man's voice started giving us instructions.  (By the way, this guy clearly had a great sense of humor!)  When you get this far, you can log it as being found, but in order to sign the log book, you have to get a marble to a certain hole in the labyrinth.  There was a key inside that allowed us to unlock the  pitch and roll knobs that moved the labyrinth around to move the ball.  

This is the dad moving the ball around the maze.  

After we had both tried unsuccessfully to maneuver the ball to the hole, the dad finally struck pay dirt!  This door on the side popped open!  The voice gave us more instructions, and told us that we needed to put everything back before we shut the door, because once it shut, we couldn't open it again.

We signed the log book.

We took a couple of travel bugs, and then we shut the door.  After we shut the door, I realized I hadn't stuck the log book back.  Fortunately there was a phone number for us to call if there was a problem.  I called and left a message.  We locked the log book under the top of the labyrinth and left.  A little while later, I got an email from the cache owner who said he dropped by on the way home from work and fixed it.  All was well!  Whew!
After we had everything all locked up and were heading out, we noticed the two geocaching symbols tacked up by the "Welcome to Ravenland" symbol.  Best cache ever!!!

Monday, July 10, 2017

Girls Week (Plus the Grandad and the Grandsons)!

For the second year in a row (Does that make it annual?  I hope so.), after Independence Day, the men-folk went home to their jobs, and the women-folk stayed and had Girls Week!  It was a lot of fun.  The grandad said there was too much estrogen.  It was offset by two toddler boys and a grandfather!  These pictures are not in any particular order.


Micah is amazed at the results of the Speedway race!





Playing with cars on the train track!

David LOVED sidewalk chalk!


Playing chase with the grandad!

He's going to get you!


Amy decided that we needed to make sugar cookies during Girls' Week!  She and David got the plan going!



Grandad fixed the step for the new deck!

Pool fun!


The next few are fom Saturday after everyone else went home.  We went on a walk at the Bike Park.


I checked on our geocache, and I accidentally dropped it down the sign post.  Angela and the dad worked together to save the day!


A photo op at the Arts Crawl downtown.

We found a little train and connecting tacks.  Micah is checking them out!





The sandbox was a big hit!

What can be cuter than a sleeping baby in  a swing!  Not much!

Drawing on the sidewalk!

Chelsea got us popsicles!

Pure cuteness!



More pure cuteness!





Wheelbarrow rides for everyone!










A taste for Grandad!

Amy loved the bubbles as much as the boys did!








Angela brought and cut a bunch of Christmas fabric so we could all make faux quilted Christmas ornaments!

 





Back to the cookie baking day!







David spent hours in the sandbox.  It was well worth having such a fun place for him to play.  I'll have to admit, I like the sandbox, too!


On Sunday, we drove Angela to Moab and met Steve there.  We went to Sacrament meeting there.


Then we had a tasty and delicious picnic.

After the picnic, Steve and Angela took off to American Fork, and we headed back to Gallup.  The adventure was officially over!  It was a good week!