Geocaching

Yesterday we drove to Gwich'in park for an afternoon of geocaching. The day was gorgeous, sunny, with a slight breeze and 10 degrees - although it felt warmer in the sunlight. About 30 minutes south of Inuvik along the Dempster highway we pulled into the park and saw a few dozen people, more people than I'd seen at one time since arriving to Inuvik!

After a few minutes at the playground in which Jacob finally decided he was big enough to go down the slide by himself, and loved, we wandered over to greet some friends. I met a man who was nervous about moving to Yellowknife claming "I'm not much of a city person, all the people and congestion..." Dave pointed out that Yellowknife barely qualifies as a city with its population of 20,000 and then introduced me as coming from NY. Funnily enough, I'd been asking on the way to the park why people had camps, Inuvik is basically a camp. Is the purpose of the camps for people to feel like they're getting away from the trees and dirt close by to see trees and dirt farther away? I'm confused...

We then went geocaching. Dave had set up 5 geocaches a few days prior for his school and left the caches for us to use. We were given the first set of coordinates and after a clarification on using the gps - we initially wandered in the opposite direction - headed off towards the 1st cache. Walking on tundra and crossing all the swollen rivers thanks to the melted snow means my shoes are useless. I managed to stay dry til after the second cache when I got a couple soakers with Aaron on my shoulders.

Dave had hidden the caches well and especially at the second one we formed a search line and then a search radius to find it. Until one mom was too tired to search after carrying her baby, stayed at zero point and noticed it hidden at her feet under some torn up moss. We saw quite a bit of scenery en route and especially walking through the lichen the air smelled like fresh woodsy tea. 

Nearly two hours later we emerged, slight wet and slightly torn for a delicious barbeque completed with s'mores before we drove home for the night.