The Trophies Have Arrived

We got in the trophies for our 10-GeoGem Challenge geocaching contest (mentioned below) and I think they came out real nice, what do you think? We can't wait to present them to the First Place & Second Place winners this coming weekend...

Thanks Chiu!

Chiu and his wife met us at our favorite local asian bakery and they gave us some fish that they caught this weekend.

Well, we made a broccoli and Spanish Mackerel medley and coupled that with a tamerind and Permit soup. The fish are a welcome addition to our diet and Chiu has been so gracious to share his good fortune in fishing with us. I wish I could catch fish as well as he and his wife do...

Thanks again guys!

Happy Father's Day

Hope today was memorable for you as 'children' of all ages did all sorts of things to thank their Dad's for being there...

As for me, I played catch-and-release with an opossum that was foolish enough to take a stroll across our back porch. I was able to trap it in a corner and grab it, then we drove over to an industrial park nearby and dropped it off. Mean looking beasty, huh? Definitely not as cute and cuddley-looking as the ones in the movie, "Over The Hedge"...

A Hot Day For Geocaching

But we did it anyway...

It seems that the competitors in our geocaching contest were down to the last Geogem and it was placed in what is most likely the toughest geocache in Tampa Bay. After the hunt was over, Team Adventure Seeker won the coin toss and subsequently, First Place in our contest. Since Cusmith was along with us, all he needs to do is pick up the coin and move it in the preserve tomorrow and he will be awarded Second Place in the contest.

Well, on to the pictures...

And the quest begins. Cusmith is on the left and Team Adventure.Seeker are at the center and the right.

I came across a little Gopher Tortoise is we were hiking along the trails. This little guy is about the size of a chicken egg.

It was kinda cute how he tucked himself into his shell like this when he saw me with the camera.

I also came across this spider in its web while we were hunting for a geocache container nearby.

After we found all of the containers that had information in each one in order to calculate the coordinates for the final location, we sat down and worked out the numbers, then after checking out the coordinates that was 311 feet away (nope, that wasn't it), we regrouped for another calculating session.

We tried again and it still was not right, so we headed back out to check some of the locations to confirm what we had written down.

On the way, I came across this flowering prickly pear cactus.

And a second one too.

Then, we settled down for yet another calculation session. Come to find out, an extra number was added and it now worked out right.

And, here they are. After a coin toss, Team Adventure Seeker came out the First Place winners of our 10-GeoGem Challenge

Company Picnic At Lake Seminole

We spent the day out at Lake Seminole for Luann's company picnic. We had some fun at the party, did a little geocaching and we took quite a few nice pictures too.

The picnic used up 2 picnic shelters, had a DJ, a money grabbing contest, raffle drawings, kiddie playground and lots of food.

Oh and there was a clown doing balloon animals for the children...

They made sure you knew where things were and what was available.

Here was the dealy for the money grabbing contest. It was loaded with 50 dollars in singles and the contestant was given 30 seconds to scoop up as many of them as he or she could.

A bouncy 'ride' in the kiddie play area.

And another one...

And another one...

And yet another one. The kids seemed to have a blast in this area.

Afterwards, we started hiking around, looking for photographic opportunities and geocaches.

I thought that this marsh flower was interesting.

And this meandering brook view was striking too.

The birds were quite willing to work with us.

Although, this mallard kept 'ducking' down, making it hard to get a photo with its head up like this.

When we went to find a geocache by the butterfly garden, Luann took some pictures while I hunted for the container.

This lizard seemed to take an interest in our photography...

We even came across this baby alligator in the nearby pond.

Here is a side view of the little guy.

After a while, we left the park and stopped by a spot near the Saint Pete Pier that had a geocache we couldn't find. Unfortunately, we didn't find it this time, but we got some great pictures though.

Here's Luann taking a pic of a horseshoe crab on the seawall...

Then she got this great shot of a blue heron catching a fish.

After he gulped down the fish, he flew closer to us so we could get a couple of close-up shots, then he flew away.

Then we came across this squirrel which I guess you might call: "Stumpy".

Since it was getting to be late in the day, we called it quits and headed home. This was a bunch of fun and the photgraphic opportunities were great...

Geocaching Contest

We created a Geocacher's contest for our caching buddies, using 10 of these things called, GeoGems...

...which are acrylic gemstones with a serial number etched on each one so it can be tracked at geocaching.com (you can see the words etched on the gems in the picture). We created some neat little travel boxes for them which you can see in the following pictures. After that was done, we dropped all 10 gems off in big parks and nature preserves from Manatee County to Pasco County on Sunday morning, June 7th, and it took all day and 325 miles to do it. Good thing the Magnum gets good gas mileage. We'll tell you more about it later, but for now, here are most of the pictures that the competitors are putting on the GeoGem's geocaching webpages...