Meeting Pam from Nomadic Newfies

Yesterday Chablis and I had a real treat - we finally got to meet fellow blogger Pam from over at Nomadic Newfies. 

We've been following each other's blogs and chatting for awhile.  For the past several months we've been trying, and having the hardest time, scheduling a day to meet.  Tinkerbell must have waved her magic wand because yesterday our schedules miraculously cleared and we met for lunch and a hike.  Finally!!

Since we live a little over an hour away from each other, we picked a spot about half way for both of us and had lunch first.  Over pizza and pasta the three of us chatted non-stop about hiking, photography and camping.  Chablis and Pam discovered they have a mutual love of Gatlinburg and had plenty to talk about.  Since I've never been there I had to sit and take notes of all the places I'd now like to see there.  Note to self - add Gatlinburg to my bucket list.

After lunch we decided to drive to the Ryerson Conservation Area and do a little hiking.  Ryerson Woods is noted in Lake County history because the first European of the area settled there.  In the 1920's several families bought the property and built weekend retreats, and then eventually donated 257 acres to the Lake Country Forest Preserves.  Today it's a spectacular preserve that supports a wide variety of state endangered species.

We strapped on our hiking boots and took off down a gorgeous woodland trail.  Well manicured and lush, it was also teeming with killer mosquitoes.  We doused ourselves liberally with bug spray, twice, and those little suckers were not deterred.   It must have been all the Italian spices that attracted them to us.  At any rate, we only lasted a couple of blocks before we turned tail and made a beeline for the open meadow.

We walked past some of the old buildings on the property and found another trail that led more around the perimeter of the forest.  It was much less buggy and we were able to walk and snap some photos while we talked. 

Pam is well versed in a wide variety of native flowers and she pointed out all the different varieties and impressed us with her knowledge.  You really need to go check out her blog because she takes fantastic close up photos of flowers on her many hikes.  Here's a link to one of my favorite recent posts.

Unfortunately we picked the hottest day of the year to meet up - it was about 95 degrees in the shade and dripping with humidity.  After an hour of hiking and dodging the relentless  mosquitoes we decided to call it quits and retreat to our air conditioned cars.  We really had a great visit though and promised to meet up again this autumn and give it another try when the colors start changing.  I'm looking forward to joining Pam again and I'm really happy we finally got the chance to spend the afternoon together.

Stop by and check out her blog, Nomadic Newfies.  I think you'll enjoy meeting her.  She did a post about our meet and greet here.

Lake County Caching

We went out to Lake County on Sunday with my parents and found 15 caches, and had 1 DNF, in about 3 hours.  It was just nice to get out early on a Sunday morning and not have to deal with a bunch of traffic and muggles.

The view out over this lake was really pretty.

The cache was hidden somewhere along this boardwalk....

Notice that I am wearing my SAUCE headband and my STITCHFORK DESIGNS sweatshirt!

We had to wade through this field....

..... to find one of my favorite caches of the day....

Mom and Dad discussing another cache....

The last cache of the day was up on a hill overlooking a pond.  Mom spied the cache and we were done for the morning.

We were home in time for lunch and an afternoon of NFL. And a nap....  It was a great way to spend the day!

Caching in on BMPs

One of the best things about being self-employed is that I can pretty much schedule my own hours.  Plus, I work with my husband, so if I want to take a day off and play hookey, it's usually pretty easy to do unless the snow is flying.  Today is the last day of my sisters visit, so we took off to do a couple more caches since it was such a nice day.  The first one we did was called "Caching in on BMPs" and it was a 4 stage cache.  That mean we had to go to 4 different locations and find a cache container and figure out clues to the next stage.  This is part of the cache description from the cache page:

This geocache is sponsored by the Lake County, Illinois Stormwater Management Commission (SMC). The objective of this multi-cache is to find 4 different caches and learn about Best Management Practices (BMPs) along the way. Stormwater BMPs are acceptable practices designed to improve water quality by preventing or reducing stormwater runoff pollution, conserving water and recharging the aquifer.

We head out to stage one, which is at:

On our hike to the cache, we passed a few silo's and a cistern....

When we reached the cache site, this is what we found.  Can you guess where the cache was hidden?

If you guessed that it was hidden inside this birdhouse you were correct and you have what is known as "good geosense."

Inside the cache box was a clue and some co-ordinates for where we were to go next....

Stage 2 was at this little bridge over a creek and we had to locate the 2nd box with another set of clues...

Stage 3 was a hike thru the forest, a little over a mile round trip, where we had to go to this bridge and get some information off of the bridge tag...

Here is the cache at the final stage....

After that we went to the Lake County Office and we each received this coin as a keepsake.

It was a really nice morning, the sun was shining and temperatures climbed up to about 50 degrees, so it was a great way to spend some time with my family.  The whole 4 stage cache only  took us about an hour and a half to do, we learned all about BMP's and we got a collectible coin on top of it!