Lake Bemidji State Park
—Bemidji, MN—
My sister lives in Bemidji, so this made for an easy stopping place after a long day of geocaching. We spent the night there (after my nephew's birthday party in town), and so that meant we got to start out Sunday morning with a short drive to the state park just outside of town.
We made it to the park by 10 am and quickly found our way to the first location. We quickly learned that this park ranger liked to play games. The ammo box was attached to the kiosk, and was locked with a combination padlock. In order to open the box we would have to find the other locations and correctly answer the clues.
Right around this time we were joined by an experienced geocacher who wanted to join in our expedition: Grandpa Harvey. So he jumped right in and manned the stroller.
It was a beautiful day in the park. It was pretty busy with campers; since it was the last day of a holiday, weekend we expected that.
We took off hiking find the other locations.
Do you see the small box mounted on the bridge—we found it. It was the second location...
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| Clue # 2- You just squeezed it to hear the bird sound it played. We knew it was not the loon nor the bald eagle, so it had to be the osprey. |
We entered in the coordinates for the next location, and it was confusing because the trail we were on was not heading in the correct direction. Fortunately, we found a map sign pretty close. By looking at the sign we were able to see a trail that looked like it would end approximately where the GPS was leading us.
It was a nice time for some Marcus and Grandpa time—they walked together, and sometimes Grandpa carried him. Eventually we got to the fork in the path and started hiking the correct direction. The path ended at an overlook over a small pond. This is where the the GPS was leading us as well. At the end of the dock it said the distance was 5 ft. The entire dock gave a really close reading on the GPS.
The searching began...
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| Marcus looked too... |
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| Not here! |
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| We looked in the dock! (Just a water bottle stuck here.) |
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| We looked everywhere... |
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| We looked over the edge of the dock... |
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| Where is it? |
We searched for about 30 minutes – three experienced goecachers and a toddler (who has done a lot more caches than most adults) – and we didn't find anything. This was pretty frustrating. We decided to call it a day and made the assumption that "Muggles" (Non-geocachers) found it and "muggled it." Time to find a park ranger...
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| Marcus in search of a park ranger. |
We all headed back toward the starting point. We figured we had a good game plan. I would go to the rangers station, and Luke would start trying to crack the Master lock combination code with the multiple choice possibilities we had available and guessed at. We knew two of the three answers to the clues, so it was a good starting point.
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| Lots of bugs and heat while Luke works on the lock. |
When I went to the ranger station there was a long line – well, it wasn't that long, but the group in front of me was all up in tithers because they didn't like their camping location. It was not directly next to some of their friends... oh, the drama! Eventually I spoke with the ranger, and she gave me the answer for the third clue. She also told me it was supposed to be located on a pole???? I am not sure what happened but I swear we looked everywhere! So does Luke. The thing got muggled.
With the right numbers we finally got into the ammo box – SUCCESS!
Just an FYI that the Osprey was the answer to all of the clues in the park... and it was the bird card in the box. How appropriate!
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| Also known as the Sea Hawk. Here is what they sound like: Osprey calls at Cornell Lab of Ornithology. |
It is a good thing we got there so early because this took a lot longer than expected – mainly due to all of the extra time in search of third location. It was also a long hike to get there, so that took up some time. The good news is that we finished just in time to make it to the Bemidji 4th of July parade!
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