A Cold Day Geocaching

Minnesota winters can get interesting at times. Having lived in Northern Minnesota for a decade years ago we learned that one has to adapt to the climate and make it a point to get outside and enjoy the weather so cabin fever is kept at bay.

To help the transition from winter indoor prisoner to winter liberator, we took up snowmobiling, cross country skiing and ice fishing. That made all the difference in the world as we very much enjoyed the longest season of the year.

So what does that have to do with geocaching? That appears to be one of our tickets to dealing with the winter here in Southern Minnesota.

This past Saturday we bundled up and headed out to see what treasures we could find.

I downloaded the coordinates of five caches into the handheld GPS unit and off we went.

The first location was about five miles from home. It was located in a park in North Mankato that we had never been to before. It was wide open and flat so with a temp in the very low digits and 25 mph winds, the windchill was well into negative territory.

To make a long story short, we found three of the five caches that day. The two that we could not find were in Nicollet County Parks. I sure hope the reason for not finding them was because of the snow and not someone stealing the caches from the park property.

The weather did improve that day. Actually, the weather stayed the same, we just had better "cover" at the four locations after the first wide open park.

Of course we have pictures for you. These are the three that we found.




And now a few more pictures of the hearty souls in the cold and some of the local scenery.









I guess we will do about anything to delay remodeling our three bathrooms! The way I look at it, we can't work all the time.

Tune in again soon for another edition of "Now What Are They Doing?"