More swimming and geocaching

It may have cooled back down in some areas of the country (including back home!), but here in southern Illinois it’s still REALLY hot and humid!  Thursday’s high was predicted to be 97 degrees, so it sounded like a good day to spend at the beach!

Despite the heat, we pretty much had the beach to ourselves!

One of our neighbors in the campground has a couple of Sea-Doos, and invited to guys to take a ride.

Making sure Nick knows the hand signals . . .

Unfortunately, the Sea-Doo chose that very moment to stop running, so they had to get towed back to shore.  Nicolas got a ride on the other (faster!) Sea-doo, though.

Nicolas takes a ride on the Sea-Doo with one of the girls . . .

While they were out for their spin around the lake, the Dad’s were trying to figure out what happened with the other Sea-Doo. 

Tom the engineer gets right in there!

We found out later that 3 rocks had gotten sucked up into the motor, and were rattling around in there, not allowing the motor to spin properly.  Later, after dinner, the guys managed to get the rocks out . . . but weren’t sure if permanent damage had already been done!

It’s HOT, and Bryce is ready to get back in the water!

We stayed for a couple more hours, until everyone was sufficiently sunburned . . . and then headed back to the campground to relax and cook dinner.  When we got in the truck to leave the beach, the external temperature reading was 100 degrees . . . our hottest day yet!  Later we played some cards and watched a movie in our RV . . . it was just too hot to have a fire!

On Friday, after breakfast of waffles and bacon, we decided to do a little geocaching.  It was overcast, and not supposed to be quite as hot . . . but we all needed a break from the sun anyway!

We thought this one would be easy, but no such luck!

Todd, Josh and Kylie had never been geocaching before, so we thought this would be a fun way to introduce them to it . . . unfortunately our first two attempts (right in the campground!) were unsuccessful. 

We weren’t doing a very good job of convincing them that this was a FUN pasttime!

Even Bryce was getting tired from the effort!

We didn’t find the cache, but Bryce found a “natural” bike rack!

Giving up on those, we left the campground to attempt a series of 4 caches in the Kaskaskia wildlife Refuge.  We had to find the first 3 caches in order to find the “codes” we needed to be able to open the last one.

At the first, we were a little distrustful of the GPS that was pointing us into an area of waist-high weeds, so we took a little walk down a mowed path.

Taking a walk along the banks of the lake . . . but not towards the cache!

We finally decided to listen to the GPS, and Tom trudged into the weeds . . . and he found the cache!

Tom makes the first find of the day!

With our confidence boosted from the find, we go back to the truck and continue our search for the 2nd cache in this series.  This one took us down a “scenic drive”  . . . and it was definitely an adventure!

This narrow gravel “road” (unnamed on our GPS) to us to the 2nd cache.

The hint that was included in the description for this cache made it an easy find for Bryce.

Bryce and Tom in the middle of the “tree junction”

Number 3 took us to a boat launch, and everybody got into the search, but it was Bryce who made the find again!

Close to the “end of the line” now, everyone gets into the search!

The final cache included quite a hike, but we weren’t giving up at this point!  Tom and Nick took the lead, and the rest of of followed close behind.

This guy was practicing for an upcoming bass tournament . . . looks good!

We made the long hike to the far side of the island, and the kids dove right into the woods to look for the large cache and use the 3 codes we had found that would unlock the box.  Once again, the coordinates were right on and Nicolas found the cache with no trouble . . . well, hopefully no trouble . . . we’ll see if he ends up covered in poison ivy n a day or two!!

Everybody washes off their arms and legs to minimize the poison ivy risk!

Having successfully completed this geocache series (yeah!), we headed back to the air conditioned comfort of the RV.  The boys headed right to the showers, and Tom and I loaded up the dirty clothes and went to the laundromat in Sullivan. 

We got a little bit of rain as we were coming back from Sullivan, but it didn’t last long or cool the temperatures down much.  After our busy day, we were ready to relax in the air conditioning again tonight, and watch another movie.  Maybe tomorrow we’ll be able to have a fire!