Staycation: Day 3

On Sunday, we met some good friends at a local park near the coast for a little picnic lunch and geocaching. The park is really beautiful. It's full of climbing trees and interesting sculptures. And, today, people. The crowd was unexpected, and made for challenging geocaching, as it's important to keep random people from noticing the caches in case someone decides to make off with it. Really, it's not much of a threat, I think. These caches never have anything of value in them. But some have gone missing, so we play it safe.

Here's another view of the park and the adjacent bay. There's a kite shop nearby, and some real beauties flying in the park.

This was probably my favorite. When it got up in the air, the tail waved slowly and gracefully.

The unexpected crowds were the result of an event taking place in the park: a gathering of local classic Chevy enthusiasts. Many of these cars have been taken from transportation to works of art.

Beautiful, but not enough to keep the attention of the kids for more than a moment. The trees were far more interesting to our little aerialists.

After lunch and little tree climbing, it was time to go hunting for caches. Two were secreted among the rocks along the bay wall. The kids enjoyed climbing around on them, looking in the crevices for the camouflaged tupperware containers that these caches were made from. We found one little one, but the other eluded us, despite some pretty specific clues in the cache's description. Oh well...it's more fun looking than finding, sometimes.

Down closer to the water, the sea wall rocks make a nice home for hundreds of little crabs. I spent a few minutes just watching them scuttle around...and trying to get a decent photograph. Not easy in the strange reflected light, while dodging sea spray.

The other two caches were in the nearby shopping area: our first "urban" caches. Here's the family, pausing for a quick group photo. I need to get a haircut!

Along the seaside promenade, a man had brought out his family of parrots. He was happy to put birds on shoulders for photos. Here's Sarah, with a rather scraggly looking little fellow.

And Isabella, with a much happier looking yellow parrot.

We found this shop in our wanderings. We've got pretty deep Scandinavian roots, including Norwegian and Swedish. Couldn't resist taking this shot!

And buying this shirt...

The geocaching went well in this built-up part of the park. We found one tiny cache, held magnetically under some pipes. The last was very challenging. It was located in an area very near a band stand in the middle of the little shopping village. OK, no problem. Except that a band was playing there. And they were good. And the massive crowds thought so too. We tried once, found lots of people literally sitting/leaning on the area where we thought the cache might be, and gave up. Thankfully, when we came back about a half hour later the band had gone home, and the tourists with them. We found the cache, surreptitiously traded out a few trinkets and signed the log, and got it back in place without tipping the public off.

We had a great day. Food and fun with friends, in one of the most beautiful areas of our home town. Just what a staycation should be.