Treasure Hunting! - Finders Keepers @ Lincoln City, OR

Floats Photo from www.visittheoregoncoast.com

Our family loves a good treasure hunt.  Whether it's keeping an eye on the ground on our walks for discarded change or searching out hidden treasure in Geocaches, we love the thrill of hunt.  So when we heard about Finders Keepers in Lincoln City, OR we were immediately intrigued.  

Finders Keepers is an annual event along the 7+ miles of beaches that has over 3000 hand blown glass floats and other items hidden for the public to find.  Glass float hunting was a popular hobby up until a decade or so ago.  Japanese fishing boats previously used hand blown glass floats to float their nets.  During storms, and through wear and tear, the floats would come loose and people would find them along the coast.  As fishing boats turned more and more to plastic buoys, floats became harder to come by. 

As a nod to the past, Lincoln City sponsored the first Finders Keepers in 1999.  Growing to the more than 3000 glass items that will be hidden from October to Memorial Day, Lincoln City has created the perfect excuse to visit the coast out of the traditional tourist season.  So we will be heading to Oregon at some point this winter to try our luck...You should head to the beach too! 

Go Climb A Mountain - Free Entrance Days in the National Parks

Here is the Pacific Northwest we are lucky to be surrounded with amazing options for outdoor activities.  Within an hour we can be hiking deep into an old growth forest or climbing mountains.  One of the reasons we have this bounty available to us, is the commitment to preserve these green spaces for public use.  In addition to the many state parks and community spaces, the National Parks System has several parks within driving distance with the most famous being Mt. Rainier and the Olympic National Park.  This weekend, no matter where you are in the United States, you can enjoy these historic wonders for yourself.  As part of it's 100th Birthday, the National Parks Service is opening all of it's parks for free!  That's right, no entrance fee at the more than 400 National Parks throughout the country.  So grab your hiking shoes, pack a lunch and go enjoy the tranquility of nature.

Gotta Catch Them All - Pokemon Go!

 We are a pop culture loving, video game playing, movie watching family.  That being said, we prefer games that allow us to play together.  We are drawn to trivia games like You Don't Know Jack and Scene it?, as well as group games like Mario Kart, Peggle, Mario Party and Super Smash Bros.  So when Pokemon Go! was announced we were both wary and intrigued. If you haven't yet begun you journey to be a Master Pokemon trainer, Pokemon Go! is an augmented reality gaming app that gets you outside to track down Pokemon.  

Now while only one of us is really into Pokemon, the game drew us all in fairly quickly.  By the second day of playing, we were planning a trip downtown to see if we could find rare Pokemon.

Hanging with his non-digital brethren. 

Our favorite part of the game (besides collecting them all) is that it gets us outside and moving while also keeping us engaged with each other.  On our walk downtown, our youngest worked as the spotter, letting us know each time the phone vibrated when a Pokemon was near and our oldest directed us towards better areas to track them down.  All said and done, we walked over 6 miles together tracking down elusive Pokemon.  Six miles of laughing and hanging out as a family... Just keep track of where you are so you don't stop traffic trying to catch a Pikachu.   

Pokemon Go is available on both iTunes and Android. 

$5.93 or Keep Your Eyes On The Ground

Over the last year our youngest and I have kept an eye to the ground.  It all started when we found a few pennies on one of our daily walks.  He asked if they were fake and, when I said they were real, asked why they had been thrown out.  It began a talk about the value of little things and how the things that some people thought had little value meant more to others.  We also discussed how little treasures added up quickly, both monetarily and in life.  We decided to collect what we found in a special container and total it after a year.  $5.93....134 coins....one little treasure almost every other day.  We are about to start a new year of treasure hunting....I think we'll keep looking down. 

Walk Into Fantasy - Fremont Troll

There are not many places where you can come face-to-face with mythological creatures.  And there are even fewer chances in the city.  Which is why the Fremont Troll is such a magical creature.  Built in 1990 to protect and transform the area under the Aurora Bridge, the troll has become a Seattle icon.  The Troll is holds a full size VW Beetle under his hand and holds court at the top of his own street, Troll Ave. This is one of our favorite stops on neighborhood hikes, with the 4 year old proclaiming him "Friend Troll" and the 11 year old figuring out how to put his head in the Troll's nose.

Create Fire(Starters)

Spring is upon us and therefore camping season is right around the corner.  We love spending time under the stars, roasting marshmallows over a campfire.  And one of the best ways we've found to ensure we have a roaring fire is to make sure we have plenty of these fire starters on hand.  These are made from stuff you would normally throw away so some pre-planning is necessary. 

You will need:
an empty egg carton
dryer lint
paraffin wax
a tin can to melt the wax in

 Start with a simple double boiler to melt the wax.  Fill a sauce pan with about 1 1/2 to 2 inches of water and place your tin can in.

 

Add your block of paraffin wax and turn the stove to medium.

 While that melts, move on to the next step. 

Take the dryer lint and stuff it into each of the dimples.

Once you have stuffed each of the dimples with lint it's time for the wax.

Pour your melted wax evenly over each lint pocket.

And that's it... let it dry and store it with your camping gear.  When you need a fire starter, break off one or two of these and add them to your kindling.  They work great.   

Virtual Grand Canyon - Google Street View Goes To The Grand Canyon

View Larger Map

Our family loves the outdoors.  We have hiked in more than half of the 50 States and plan to trek the rest as soon as possible.   There are some hikes that are high on our list but we are putting them on hold until our youngest gets a bit bigger.  Hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon is one of those hikes. Knowing this, the good people at Google have sent out seasoned hikers loaded down with 360 degree cameras on as many trails as possible so we can enjoy the majesty without the danger of taking a four-year-old down a cliff.  This is an awesome way to plan a future trip as well.
Grand Canyon On Google Maps 
 

Geocaching Part II - Travel Bugs and other Trackables

The Dead Are Rising, (And They Have Never Been More Adorable)

 

I talked about Geocaching, or Modern Treasure Hunting, in a prior post.  The hidden treasure nature of the game it the main draw for my boys, but they have started to explore the other facets.  Trackables are their new favorite.   A trackable is an item or tag that has been etched with a unique tracking number and is registered at one of the geocaching websites.  Once the owner places it in a geocache, any new finders of the trackable log their find online and move it to a new geocache.   Some of these trackables will travel many thousand miles all over the world (one's even been to the International Space Station!)  As for our trackables, our farthest traveled one has traveled 29,000 miles and counting

, but our current favorite is Run Frodo! which is currently traveling through New Zealand.

Kang The Slightly Menacing