Antelope Island

Saturday morning we woke up to a insane thunderstorm. Darren came to our room around 5 am with his giraffes totally afraid of the thunder. We spent a few minutes looking at the weather app and talking about storms but then it was time to get up and get ready for the Antelope Island Stampede race that Daniel and I were supposed to run at 8 am. I could only think about my still-new and pricey running shoes getting all muddy on the trail but luckily by the time we got there the trail had drained pretty nicely. Darren stayed with Maren and David and went to Max's football game (thanks guys!). I have been sick for a week now so I wasn't feeling 100% well but I still enjoyed running the now familiar White Rock trail. I placed 10th overall (female) and 3rd on my age group. I was 25 sec slower than last year so I felt slightly disappointed.

What I'm really proud about is Daniel's courage to run with me when he had basically no time to train (we only did the 5k) and he didn't do bad at all, I think all that morning basketball paid off and the few times he was able to make it to the gym the past month. He completed the race in 35 minutes placing 4th on his age group. So hooray for Daniel!

This is what the island looked like at 7:30am.

Yes, there's a bison on the right side of the picture..and it makes me so scared to think about finding one on the trail. YIKES!

Next week: The Classic Race in Layton. I'll be running the 10k :)

Geo-Treasure Hunt

A couple of weeks ago Daniel and I made some time to go on a date. We didn't have a whole lot of time and we didn't want to spend a lot of money. We really didn't want to go to yet another movie so Daniel came up with the brilliant idea to go "Geocaching". I had never heard about it but after he sent me a link and I watched some videos I loved the idea of spending some time looking for "treasures" with him.  The purpose is to hide and seek containers called "caches" or "geocaches". I guess the most common one is the small waterproof container that has a logbook where you are supposed to write the date and your name when you find it. Some other larger containers may have inexpensive toys or trinkets for trading.


This could be something fun to do with the kids. They even have some items called "travel bugs" that you are supposed to take to another cache for another person to find and help take it to its ultimate destination. There are also "puzzle caches" that require information or solving a puzzle to find the cache.

Caches are located in cities, parks, trails and even people's front yards. This is a great way get out of the house and spend time with the family. Bring the dog along if you have one!


The first one we picked was close to our home but we failed at finding it :P It didn't help that we had no idea what we were looking for and the size of the cache. After driving around for a while and people looking at us suspiciously we headed south to explore another place. These "caches" are located EVERYWHERE and all you need is your cellphone with GPS, a pen and tennis shoes because you'll be doing some walking.

So, on our next attempt, we explored a trail and followed the clues. After much searching BINGO! Daniel found the cache right on the gas pipeline sign and boy did we feel like we had found a real treasure!! WOO HOO!

We walked about 500 yards north and we found another one! Holy cow! was this fun?!

So anyway, after walking and driving for a while we ended up our fun evening with some yummy Mexican food. I think these are the little moments in life I treasure the most :)


** Yesterday we decided to take Darren to find his first cache. He loved it! I can't wait to go and do it again! :)