Games, Kids, Nature, Technology, Uncategorized

False Alarm

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We had rather a to do here on Monday when the city police issued a shelter in place order for the part of town north of the interstate.  Someone had found a cylindrical metal container, like a mortar shell, chained to a fence near the Department of Transportation lot where they park the snow plows and road graders.  After assessing things, the police determined it was not a bomb,  but a container for geocaching.  Someone attached it to the fence without getting permission from the DOT to do so.

I like the concept of people  getting outside and wandering around searching for hidden objects with their GPS. How fun!  It is too bad the north part of town had to be so alarmed about being blown up.  My friend the General Mills security guard says they get several reports a year of such unsanctioned containers on the borders of General Mills property.

What are your favorite  outdoor activities?  Any good scavenger hunt stories?

 

21 thoughts on “False Alarm”

  1. Yesterday the wind here was gusting up to 50 mph. It was not a good day to be outside. I think walking with a terrier in a park or else gardening are my two favorite outdoor activities.

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  2. Slightly OT: My dad did several business deals with General Mills. Dad met Clayton Moore, who played the Lone Ranger, and he concluded that Moore actually believed he was the Lone Ranger. One day dad was shown a huge storage area, like a farm silo, filled with stuff that people claimed they had found in General Mills cereals: barrettes, stones, scissors, bolts, bobby pins . . . it was just kept in a huge pile. The policy at General Mills when they got this stuff was to apologize (although they didn’t believe most of the stories) and reward the senders with free cereal.

    Dad knew a guy who enjoyed pranks. The prankster and his buddies had a spectacularly successful Canadian wilderness fishing trip, catching several northern pike in the 30-pound class. Heading home, they passed the General Mills headquarters during the evening commute. There used to be a tiny reflecting pond between headquarters and the highway. The prankster and his buddies grabbed fishing rods and began walking back and forth between the office and the pond with those monster fish thrown over a shoulder. The next day was chaos, with crowds of fishermen fighting each other for spots on the shores of the reflecting pond, throwing muskie lures into that tiny pond.

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  4. Favorite activities outside are walking in woods or some other wild place – along a seashore, prairie (which we did with friends last week), river, mountain backpacking. Also following railroad tracks… I guess any walking outdoors. And I’ll add ice skating, even though I don’t do it anymore.

    This wasn’t exactly a scavenger hunt, but for Joel’s 10th birthday, Husband had created maps to various points outdoors that a kid would follow, and at each location would find another note with new directions. We’re trying to remember what was the ” prize” at the end, but no luck there. : )

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  5. Busy day until this moment. My favorite outdoor activity is gardening with hiking a close second. Sitting on my back deck or my front patio, rocking or gliding, is third. Until yesterday we had been taking the dogs to the dog park, then the CDC announced that dogs can transmit the virus, so hiking there is not going to continue. This had been my best choice to continue my knee rehab, since gyms and treadmills are not available right now. Walking on cement is too painful and results in pain and swelling.

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  6. I forgot two big ones – gardening, and biking on relatively flat terrain. All of the things I’ve mentioned can be done during quarantine. My only excuse for not getting outside is if, like today, it’s kind of cold and windy.

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  7. Hi-
    I’ve been discombobulated today. Slept too late, tried to get out of here and into the college too quick, and once there was pretty much a waste of space.
    I don’t think I’ve ever done a scavenger hunt either. Well, unless you call searching for eggs or perhaps backtracking through a field trying to find a part that fell off some machine. Sometimes you find it, sometimes you don’t. Or at least not right away.
    I picked up a piece of metal in the field last week, it’s a bracket that holds up the “skip plate” on the haybine. Considering I haven’t used the haybine on that field since I sold the cows 15 years ago and I remember having to replace that piece, it could have been out there for 20 years. It’s about 6″ long, 5″ wide and 2″ thick. Been plowed up and plowed back under lots of times. I was always so impressed my dad could dig something up out of the dirt and knew it was a so and so from some piece of machinery. And now I do it too.

    Regarding police and finding suspicious things, we get that in the township too. And it’s amazing how dumb are the things some people do without thinking about it. “Oh. Was that wrong?” YES!! “Oh. Sorry.”
    Just a few weeks ago, picking up trash on a roadside and there was a box full of letters, pictures, post cards. First guy called the deputies because he wasn’t sure what it was. Turns out they’re from a woman in CA in 1997 writing to a guy in prison. Of course. How they got out here in my ditch is hard to say, but, deputy decided there was nothing nefarious going on. I took them to my shed because I thought it might be interesting to look through; haven’t gotten there yet.
    Sometimes it’s a suitcase and I call the deputy to open it because I don’t know WHAT might be in there. They put their gloves on and I stand back and they lean way back and open it up. Cassette tapes. Whew.
    Several years ago workers in another township found headless bodies stuffed in bags. I’ve had red ‘infections materials’ bags with dead animals inside. And whoever threw that in the ditch thought it was a good idea??

    Favorite outside activities: I really enjoy checking on the chickens in the mornings. Just walking around and checking on everybody. I really enjoy doing fieldwork; driving the tractors and planting and watching it grow.
    MPR weather was just saying the next few days will be some of tim’s 10 perfect days with blue skies and a few clouds and warm temps. Get outside and be there if you can!

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        2. Oh man, that has to be the worst placement ever for “10 breakfast ideas,” right smack dab in the middle of an article about two headless bodies found in a ditch near Rochester.

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  8. I got to play croquet on the lawn outside my office building today during therapy. It was gorgeous and it was therapeutically appropriate. No one got clubbed with a mallet.

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  9. I am highly recommending Ken Jennings book about geocaching, Titled map head. He’s really a good writer. Like Jacque, my favorite outdoor activities gardening. A little walking, a little biking but mostly just digging my fingers in the dirt.

    I know I’ve done scavenger hunts in my life but I can’t really think of any off the top of my bed except the one that I set up for YA’s sixth birthday which had a pirate theme. It was a pretty easy scavenger hunt since it was a bunch of six-year-olds and they had five things that they had to find in the house. At one spot they found an eyepatch, at another spot a pirate hat, then a bandanna, then candy necklaces and in the last spot they found those ring pops. It was a lot of fun

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  10. Taking a walk is the easiest favorite thing to do. Preferably without a mask on. If I’m wearing a mask I don’t feel as if I’m getting quite enough air.

    Some days I walk my cat.

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  11. Can’t recall if I’ve ever done a scavenger hunt, but I have looked for the Winter Carnival medallion some years. Wonder if there will be a Winter Carnival in 2021?

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