400+ miles, 13 GeoCaches

We just got home from our cross-country trek in search of geo-caches in familiar and definately not-so-familiar territory. We started out heading west and picked up our first find in Menasha, an easy micro to get us started. We then went to the town of Dale, just west of Appleton and learned about train-road crossing safety while finding another find. 30 minutes later, we were in Amherst which is just east of Stevens Point. After a trip through some pretty "thorny" woods, we were 3 for 3 and had picked up a travel bug to drop later in the day. We stopped for lunch in Point and played at a new park across the street from Subway, missing out on a "nano"cache (too small to find and not sure what we were looking for) We then got back on HWY 10 and headed west to a little town called Miladore, where Jen found the small cache hidden in a tree near an old school. Further west, just south of Marshfield, we found a Virtual Cache which was a memorial to POWs. 1o miles after that we found a cool little park in Dexterville, WI which held an easy find for Gavin. After another 30 minute drive, we were in the State Forest and stopped at Spaulding Pond Campground which was Owen's first visit to a "bear" woods. I think he walked backwards most of the way, watching out for bears coming up from behind. We found the cache and left the Fast Freddy Travel Bug we had gotten earlier in the day. 30 m0re minutes and we were in Black River Falls, where our hotel reservation was set for the Holiday Inn Express (a stay we had won at the Spring Wine & Cheese Tasting). Before going to the hotel, we found our 8th cache of the day, a Virtual one which turned out to be a HUGE orange moose. After Pizza Hut and some fun in the pool, we headed to bed...tired! The next morning, we got up and had breakfast at the hotel. Then we went to Jackson County State Park & Campground and hiked up towards another Virtual Cache which was a view from atop a magnificent rock structure. Unfortunately, the observation platform was closed (actually destroyed and broken) so we couldn't go all the way to the top. The boys were disappointed (see photo). After our hike back out, we drove to Mirror Lake State Park in the Wisconsin Dells and found two caches, arriving at the first one at the same time as another fellow cacher from Kenosha who shared some great tips with us. After the long awaited and often asked for visit to McDonalds, we drove to Westfield while Quinn napped and found a cached that had eluded us on our last visit to the area. Then to end it all, we geocached in a little tiny cemetary in the middle of the boondocks before grabbing a pair of pumpkins in Ripon on the way home.