Lake Maria State Park

Lake Maria State Park

Well, we are keeping this moving forward.  With the goal of hitting all of the MN State Park Avian Geocaches this summer we need to start strong.  On top of this being our goal – there is also a hard stop.  The Avian Geocache program ends in October and it will be replaced by a new challange so the clock is ticking and we need to keep moving.

We have now done a bit of planning to figure out how to hit all of the parks.  I knew they were all over the state, but what that means is now sinking in: the farthest location is 340 miles from our house (Lake Bronson).  That is the same distance to Milwaukee.  The second farthest is over 330 miles (Grand Portage).  The distance between them is 438 miles – there are not a lot of roads in this part of the state!  These do not include if we decided to actually do the Garden Island Geocache and not the alternate – to get there you have to go to the Northwest Angle and take a boat through Lake of the Woods.  That is 405 miles and requires two border crossings.  You have to enter Canada and come back into the US to get to the angle. So that may be an adventure.

Back to today – we left the house around 2 pm – right when I got home from book club and headed to Lake Maria State Park by Monticello.

We got to the park and found the first sign.

We followed the road to to reach our next location, however we ran in to a small problem.  The road was closed for the winter.  So we jumped out of the car and loaded up the stroller, ready to roll.  It was over 60 degrees, but, because of the shade, there was still a LOT of snow on the ground.

We eventually found the next clue.  It was actually a bit back in the woods and Luke went to read it.  Quite a few hills.

So on the next set of coordinates.  Luke pushed Marucs in the stoller – that thing is great, but it's a beast!

After a bit we found the third and last location – this was one was fairly deep in the woods.

Hanging out in the woods.

Team "Mom and Marcus" find another one!

Also, a really cool view from the final geocache spot.  A campfire site was nearby and there was a great view of the surrounding lakes.

Marcus really loved walking on the snow. 

 Until next week!

Houdini Strikes again

This morning Marcus learned how to lock himself in the bathroom.  He had toddled off for a moment and I noticed how quiet he sounded.  I went to the bathroom and I could here he talking and giggling on the other side.  I went to open the door and oops.... it was locked!

The good news is that he was clearly happy on the other side.... now I heard flushing of the big toilet and his little Elmo potty!  I thought about it for a moment and knew I had no clue where the key was so on to plan B. I knew that the bathroom window was open so out the back door I went.  I climbed over the snow bank and removed the storm window. Marcus saw me from the other side of the window and just smiled!  He was having a good time!

Marcus in the bathroom!

It didn't take long and I got the window open and by this time he was climbing on the toilet and seeing what he could get into!

Looks at me!  I am on the toilet.

Mom – I am not guilty at all!

Well I got in and it was not a big deal.  He had a lot of fun with this tub crayons,.  Here is some proof!

In the words like that of Bill Maher – "New Rule: Must keep all crayons out of reach and hidden when no adult is around!"

Our little Houdini

On Thursday night Jess was in town to baby sit and Luke and I went to play volleyball.  We thought it was just another night but it turned out to be THE night Marcus learned to escape from his crib!  We left for volleyball around 7:30 pm and bedtime is 8:00 pm so we were hoping it would be an easy night for Jess. Until I got these texts....

We finally got home around 10:00 pm and found Marcus and Jess still wide awake in his bedroom.  We never saw him climb out his bed and I tried to put him back but it took all of 30 seconds for him to escape again.  I have done a lot of reading on the subject since and have learned that some kids are scared the first time it happens and don't repeat it for months – Not Marcus.... he saw it as his path to freedom and there was no stopping him.

We didn't know what to do so we spent the next hour or so trying to get him to sleep and we ended up moving his mattress to the floor so we would not have to worry about his safety.  This didn't take care of next problem – Marcus on the loose in his room.  We knew this was going to be a LONG night. 

Marcus Passed out on the floor

Around 11:30 pm Marcus finally passed out – You can see what a mess he made in his free time in his room... only 3.5 hours after bedtime!

Mommy moved Marcus to the mattress on the floor

He slept OK that night and got up twice more.  The good news is that I was able to get him back to sleep relatively quickly each time!

Where he was in the morning

When I went in on Friday morning this where he ended up.  Head on the mattress and curled up.  On Friday we started looking into alternatives but decided in the meantime to just keep the mattress on the floor.  The only good news is that he was so exhausted after his short night that he passed right out at nap time!

Marcus napping

Around bed time the next night Luke came up with the fabulous idea of putting the mattress on the floor in his crib – we measured it and realized that the mattress was high enough to be safe and he would not be able escape – at least not for a few month!  I call that a successful punt!

Marcus sleeping like a log!

And the muffin Madness continues....

This week Jess is in town from Iowa and, and normally we head out to brunch.  But this time Jess decided to help me on the quest for the perfect muffin.  She even brought her own favorite recipe for us to try.

Marcus – ready for some muffin action

In prep for the continued challenge I bought all new organic ingredients this week in a trip to Whole Foods with Marcus.  So an all new week, all new provisions, and a new recipe.

Jess Finding the recipe and sending it to me

One of the nice things about having Jess around is that she keeps Marcus busy while I bake.  This is a pretty rare treat, so I really appreciate her.  Jess read off the ingredients and I mixed away.  We had one little miscommunication when I added the oil directly into the dry mix instead of pre-mixing it with the other liquids. I am not sure how this impacted the end result, but just a note for the future that I should always read the entire directions before starting on anything.   Also, per Jess's instructions, we only made half of the crumble mix and that was plenty.  The entire recipe would add a lot of waste – or a lot more sugar to the final product.

Ready to go in the oven

Marcus being entertained

Fresh from the oven

Review:

The muffins were very yummy and very decadent.  They did not rise enough, but I am beginning to thing that is more about me than about the actual recipe.  I am looking for a solution to that problem.  I think that I will make these muffins again because they would make a great treat when guests are visiting or for a shower or something like that.  They are also really pretty with the crumble on top.  They are a bit too sweet for Marcus and me to make on a more frequent basis.

Recipe:   To Die for Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:
   
      Muffin batter:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup milk



This muffin tasted far better than it looks!

• 1 cup fresh blueberries

     Crumb Topping:

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup better, cubed
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat over to 400 degrees F. Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
2. Combine all dry muffin ingredients.  Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg, and enough milk to fill the cup.  Mix this with dry mixture.  Fold in blueberries.  Fill muffin cups to the top, and sprint with crumb topping mixture.
3. To make crumb topping; Mix together all ingredients.  Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking.
4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in preheated over, or  until done.

Here is a link to the website that originally posted this recipe: To Die for Blueberry Muffins

Here are some tips I have picked up now from reading lots of websites, recipes, and experience:

• Save some of your dry mix and roll your blueberries in them.  That will prevent them from sinking to the bottom.
• Bake the muffins on the lowest shelf to give them a better chance of raising – I still need to check this one out (maybe next week).
• Make sure that you do not under or over mix your batter – this will also cause them not to rise.
• Check your baking powder to make sure it is not old.

Until the next time!

Nerstrand State Park

Well, we headed off to Geocache #2 today.  One of the crazy things about the Minnesota Geocache Challenge is the logistics of the entire thing.  To start with there are a LOT of state parks to hit and to make it more difficult they have added 4 special spots that focus on the 4 biomes in Minnesota.  According to the website you are supposed to get all of the cards from the individual parks in each biome BEFORE you can get the coordinates for the biome geocache.  This is a pretty major logistics challenge considering I really don't want to have to go some of these parks twice considering their relatively remote locations.  I added a map (below) and stared the 4 biome geocaches (Lake Bronson, Savanna Portage, Nerstrand, and Camdem) and the final geocache (Itasca) and it is easy to see that it would be a lot of driving to go out and back twice to some of them.  So the question I wanted to resolve is if the geocache location was available now or if I REALLY had to bring all of the cards from that biome to prove that I had been to them.  I picked Nerstrand to figure this out because it is the closest so heading back there multiple times is not a huge deal (it still was 60 miles).  So the adventure begins...

We got running a bit later and Marcus fell asleep in the car... It was a longish drive down and we hit some construction so that slowed us down a bit.  If Minnesotans could just zipper merge (like the MN State Patrol advocates on the radio) it would be so much easier (but that is a different rant from Luke).

Marcus looking sleepy!

Vonnie ready to go!

We made it to the park and fortunately Marcus woke up form his nap ready for our big adventure.  The second we got there and pulled up the GPS I was able to see BOTH sets of coordinates (for the regular Avian Geocache and the Biome Geocache) so the mystery was solved and it is really good news for the future of this project.  Because it was only 18 degrees outside, I decided we were only going to do the Avian adventure today and come back in summer to see the park a bit better.

Since Marcus was a bit sleepy, we also decided to use the running stroller this week to push Marcus around.  He was pretty toasty warm and happy not walking.

 The ground wasn't very even so it was much easier pushing him then trying to have him walk.  You can't tell here but he was pretty happy!

It didn't take long and we were at the first location.  So one thing I have learned is that pretty much all of the first locations are at a kiosk close to the entry point and so they are pretty easy to spot.  If you look at the bottom of the left post you can see a box.  This is actually the final location for the geocache.  It is locked with a letter combination lock and in order to get it open we have to find all of the other locations and answer the right trivia question.

Location #1 – Trivia question

Way point #2 – Trivia question

Marcus at way point #2 – He was starting to get a bit cold here (notice his penguin came along for the ride, very fitting given the weather this day).

 You can see the path was pretty much just packed snow.  It wasn't too hard to make it through, but the stroller was also not super easy to maneuver through it.  When we hit the 3rd waypoint and entered the destination for the 4th waypoint, Marcus and I decided to head back to warm up while Luke moved on.  It wasn't really far but it was another 0.2 miles each way.

 Luke went onward and hit a small problem: we primarily use my IPhone for geocaching.  There is a great app from geocaching.com that has the GPS as well as all of the information about the cache... but it is on the iPhone.  We have also learned in the last few months that the iPhone does not like cold weather and turns off when it decides it is too cold.  That happened to Luke today, but that did not stop my AWESOME husband.  He found the hidden falls and the last cache without GPS by just guessing likely hiding spots and the direction/distance to get there while following the trails.  Very nicely done, indeed, if he doesn't say so himself!  The cold air had an edge to it though with the slight breeze.

Hidden Falls (about two to three feet of the stream were opened up with the water jumping over the rocks... ah, springtime)

We met back at the starting location and we now had the combination to open the lock.

You can see the excitement (perhaps) as we opened the box and got our card!

Then off to home we went!  2 down, 79 to go!

Luke pushing the stroller on the way out!  Brrr...

A few valuable lessons we have learned so far during the adventure....

• Make sure the Garmin GPS is in the car BEFORE we leave the house (did I mention we forgot this today...).
• Remember that the iPhone GPS dies in cold weather, so it if is your only GPS......
• Bring plenty of snacks and water (forgot the water today and I was thirsty).
• ALWAYS HAVE FUN (how can I not with Luke and Marcus)!!!!

One last funny video of the stroller being pushed in the snow.