Another adventure and more crazy places to visit

We left home this afternoon to go to a football (soccer) festival but just as we arrived it started to bucket down with rain. As much as I love soccer, I would prefer to be playing it rather than standing in the rain to watch it. When mum suggested that we go treasure hunting instead, we all agreed.

Our first and last finds were the best. I would tell you all about the cache called Dodgy Gorilla but it would give away the awesome secret. Instead I suggest you go find it yourself just to see how creative some finds are. (GC3V5QH - Dodgy Gorilla)

We had a quick 7 finds that were heaps of fun and finished off at Melbourne General Cemetery (GC12NFV).

How many other kids are lucky enough to spend their Sunday afternoon exploring a cemetery?
Love Princess George

Mansions for Millipedes

Normally when we go geocaching we spend our time running around looking for actual geocaches.  Today when we went geocaching we were looking for earth caches - we were learning about geographical features of the area.  We figured that as we were learning about how the different rock formations were created we would have a closer look.  By the way, all of the different rock formations in the area were created by lava flows about a million years ago.

As we were looking at the tessellated pavement we found heaps of millipedes.  Now of course these millipedes all needed somewhere to call home so we went millipede house hunting.

There are so many places to look for millipede mansions.

There could be some over here.

This millipede mansion is so big it could be a 5 star millipede resort.

Just so you get an idea of what a millipede is looking for when it is investing in real estate, I will show you one of our favourites.  This was one of the best millipede houses we found; plenty of places to rest, lots of rooms in the little holes in the rocks.  What makes this millipede mansion so impressive is the swimming pool with its own and the garden!  Who wouldn't love to live in a mansion with a beautiful swimming pool set in a garden that has plenty of dappled shade so that you don't overheat if the weather ever warms up.  We estimate that this millipede mansion would be worth about a million millipede dollars.

Have you ever been looking for millipede mansions?  It is heaps of fun, you should try it some time.
Love Princess George

International Earth Cache Day

Did you know that today is International EarthCache Day?  Well I didn't know it was until this morning.  Here I was snuggled on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, munching on toast watching some trashy Sunday morning TV when mum declares that we NEEDED to go caching to celebrate.  Dad was still in bed, Milla was on the computer and I was really in no hurry to move so mum tweeted dad (yep, that's what you do when you are too lazy to go upstairs!) and convinced dad it was time to go on another adventure to find an Earth Cache or two!

"What is an Earth Cache?" I hear you say.  Well that is exactly what I said to mum when she was nagging convincing me to get off the couch and get dressed.  Google to the rescue and we found out that... an EarthCache is similar to a Virtual Cache in the way that there is no traditional cache container or a log book, but because of their purpose they differ greatly.

The purpose of an EarthCache is to share information about a particular geological feature of our planet Earth, and the object is to learn something about it. When you visit an EarthCache, you learn something interesting about the geology of the area. Usually the information is freely given but you have to do a bit of investigative work to answer proposed questions in order to claim the cache.

EarthCaches are created by Geocachers who have knowledge of geoscience and like to share it with the world. (from Geocaching Online)

It sounded pretty cool and I was almost convinced.  I have to say that I really do like to go caching but after such a crazy busy day yesterday, I was really tired and looking forward to a quiet day.  Well that was thrown out the window, a snack bag was packed, we were dressed and before we knew it we were out the door and on our way.  

Apparently there are plenty of Earth Caches around but we just haven't been looking for them.  There are even some close enough to home that we could have ridden our bikes there but we decided to go on a real adventure to Organ Pipes National Park.  There were three Earth Caches out there for us to find.

The first was the Rosette Stone.  It is hard to see in this picture but the columns of rock all start in the middle and then move outwards, kind of like the spokes on a bike wheel.  It is pretty easy to imagine that the huge rock formation is a giant flower!

The second was the actual Organ Pipes themselves.  Now I have never seen real organ pipes but I have seen pictures of them in movies and things, huge big pipes that stick out of the organ.  Well this rock formation on the other side of the creek was just like that.  It looked like huge pipes sticking out of the ground.  Each pipe was a hexagonal shape that happened when the lava began to cool and shrink.

The last Earth Cache was further down the path.  It was the sedimentary rock that has eroded away to be kind of bumpy.  It looked like a fun place to explore and climb but it was on the other side of the creek too so I couldn't get to it.


Can you believe that all of these crazy cool rock formations were caused by volcanoes erupting near here about a million years ago.  How awesome is that!  There was so much to learn about the geology of the area as we explored the park looking for the caches.  We really will have to remember to email the answers to the questions to the cache owner so that we can log them as finds.  Sure we could have done it from Organ Pipes but there was so much more to do.

Naturally there were puddles that just had to be jumped over, or should I say jumped in!

There were rock formations that looked like we could pull them apart.  We tried but it didn't work!

Best of all there were great places to just relax and enjoy being out in the sunshine.

So there you have it, an unexpected adventure and our first 3 Earth Caches found.  Not a bad way to spend a sunny Sunday morning.
Love AJ Pickle

Ninja Kicks

Ages and ages ago, we went wandering and found a really great place to explore and we were (almost) in the area again today, so we decided to go back there and see if we could find any geocaches.  There was only one cache in the area and it was the other side of the river.  We wandered down to where there was a ford so we could get to the other side.  Unfortunately, the river was slightly flooded and the rocks we would normally jump across were completely underwater.  We really couldn't get to the other side without swimming so we had to find something else to do.

Ready to Ninja Kick!

Then dad reminded me about Ninja Kicks, the giant thistles that were all dried that were along the path - they were perfect for kicking!


They flew for miles into the air.

Ouch!

It was great fun kicking the dried heads from the plants, the only problem was when you kicked too hard and slipped over - you landed in the thistles!

Have you ever played a game like ninja kicks?

Love AJ Pickle

Sundays In My City #6 - Adventures Last Month

We are joining in with Sundays in our City again with Unknown Mami.  We were hoping to show you some photos from our weekend but other than having another billion photos of me playing soccer again (it was the local derby, Gold v Blue) we didn't have a camera with us.  Now let me just list all the things we didn't take photos of... ice skating, the opening ceremony of the Special Olympics, inline skating in the park, a barbecue in a different park, going to a baby shower for Fredwood, exploring Docklands some more and going to the ice hockey.  All of this in just one weekend and we don't have any pictures AT ALL of our adventures - EPIC FAIL!  Instead we will have to show you a few pictures of just another typical weekend.  

Now in this typical weekend we still had ice skating and soccer but also a birthday party, a birthday dinner, a chance to explore new areas and go geocaching.  

Look what happens when you let a 4 year old do your face painting!

Zombie Boo!

There is always time to tempt fate and jump from rock to rock through a creek!

Surprisingly he didn't fall in!

This treasure took a little while to find but it was well worth the hunt.

The best ever geocache hide!

If you want to join in the fun of Sundays in my City, it doesn't have to be a Sunday or even in a city, click on over to Unknown Mami.

Another Mini Adventure

I was starting to worry that being back home in Melbourne that we wouldn't have time to go on adventures any more.

Luckily we found time to go on a geocaching adventure today, on our way to a barbecue.  OK, it may not have been a successful geocaching adventure, we didn't actually find the cache, but we did have a great time exploring this cool park.

Can you believe that this park is actually in suburbia?  It was so quiet and relaxing to explore that it was easy enough to imagine that we were far away from suburbia and relaxing in the middle of the bush.

I hope that some day we get to come back here and find the cache!
Love AJ Pickle

Treasure Hunting in Boston

After the Duck Tour we had seen some pretty cool places that we wanted to visit properly but since we had 'seen' heaps of the typical touristy places we decided to explore and geocache at the same time.

Armed with the iPad for directions and co-ordinates, we head out on our treasure hunt.


There were muggles everywhere so we had to be pretty careful to find treasures without everyone else finding them.  Some we sat by for ages and ages before we had a chance to sneak in and grab the cache.

We managed to find a cache hidden in a church...

There was another one in the middle of Boston Common, right near this big monument...





But by far the nicest location for cache we found was by the banks of the Charles River...

If you haven't tried geocaching, you really should, it is the perfect way to explore a city!
Love AJ and Milla

A Day for a Stroll... To Canada

Yep that's right, we went for a walk today TO ANOTHER COUNTRY!  I never really thought that you could just walk over a bridge and be in another country.  Sure it was a pretty huge bridge to cross the Niagara River from the United States to Canada.  I don't really know if the river is in Canada or the United States, if they share it or if it is no-man's land but we did stop to get a photo taken half way across.

Where are we? USA or Canada, or somewhere in between!

We had to stop at the other side of the bridge and answer questions about why we were going there before they would stamp our passports for us.  Once the passport was stamped and we walked out the door we were in Canada.

Now I guess when you go to another country there are all sorts of things that you can do, but do you know what we decided to do?  Find somewhere to rest!

Resting and trying to work out what to do next!

Mum and dad surprised us and we bought a pass for us all to visit some of the crazy fun things that were around...  First stop was to play mini-golf with some dinosaurs.

After my first hole-in-one in Canada!

Next we wandered through a wax museum.  It was terrifying but exciting.  Luckily it was too dark to get photos of us screaming!  Then we went for a ride on a giant ferris wheel to get a good view of the falls and all that was around it.

Riding high

Oh and of course we went treasure hunting (geocaching) and our treasure hunt took us to a cemetery!

Found the spooky treasure!

We wandered around until it got dark so that we could see the coloured lights of Niagara Falls.

Waiting, waiting, waiting for dark

Red mist over Niagara

After walking all day long we were pretty tired but we had to walk all the way back to the United States!  Of course that meant stopping for photos on the way back, half way across the bridge.

Back in the middle of no-where on the bridge

The view of Canada from the bridge

It was pretty amazing spending a day in Canada and doing all the fun things there but I am really looking forward to wandering around the forest areas of New York state as we keep exploring around Niagara.

Oh and it was pretty cold today so I was really glad that we went shopping yesterday and I had a new warm winter jacket to wear.  Don't tell mum and dad, we are still pretending to be annoyed about being tricked into going shopping!
Love AJ Pickle

Downtown Cleveland

After all the busy-ness of being in Cleveland for a wedding party and getting ready for Halloween we had only one day in Cleveland to look around the city and hunt for treasures so we caught the train downtown and let our adventure begin.

Sarah had warned us that Cleveland wasn't much fun but we found plenty to do to keep us busy.  There were plenty of things to climb... statues, stair railings, even lamp posts.  Everywhere we went, AJ found something different to climb.  

There were parks and gardens and cool places to explore as we wandered around looking for treasure.  The best geocache we found was along the waterfront.

It took forever to find the cache because there were Muggles fishing in the area where the cache was hidden.  We did find a tiny little fish that was actually right next to where the cache was hiding in plain sight!

The giant stamp may say FREE but all in all, I give Cleveland a big stamp of approval!

Love Princess George