Hooky

"Good morning, Bayport Elementary."

"Hi, this is Ella and Mason's dad. I'm just calling to say that they won't be in today because they are, uh... skipping?"

"Oh, an honest parent. Well enjoy your long weekend."




Yesterday morning we loaded up the van and drove out to some Crown Land in the mountains west of us. We found this open hillside for the kids to dirtbike on (mom and dad took a couple turns too). I couldn't believe how much Ella and Mason had improved since our first outing. No longer were they just trying to stay up, in fact we ended up racing each other for best time around a circuit (I only beat Ella's time by 2 seconds).

In preparation for this trip, Mason's bike had "digivolved" - his description for the upgrades which saw the bike insured, registered, plated, and having front and rear lights. I was disappointed though that no Fish and Wildlife officers came by to check our compliance. All that work for nothing!



At midday we stopped and roasted hotdogs and marshmallows while the kids tossed crumbs to a pair of inquisitive birds.



After lunch we rode some more and did some exploring. We found the site of another campfire and cleaned up the discarded beer bottles we found there.



We made it back home at precisely the same time the kids would have gotten home from school. I talked everyone into having a 15 minute powernap and then we went back out to play at the park and to look for some new geocaches which had been set up within walking distance of our home.

We found two of the three caches but the last one bested us because the coordinates were a little off and the hint, "GNOYR", did not mean anything to me at the time. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that the letters were not an acronym for something, but were actually a word written in a popular geocaching cypher. The cypher is created by writing the alphabet in two rows, 13 letters on top and 13 on the bottom and then substituting the letters of the word with the letters found either above or below them.

Thanks to the bakeshop nearby, the trip wasn't a total loss. We purchased an assortment of goodies and sat at this Table to sample them.



Everyone had a great time, but will it be enough to convince Heather to make it a regular Friday activity? Probably not, but we'll do our best to try.



- C