It’s occurred to me that I haven’t updated this thing in almost a year, and a lot has happened in that time. My last post left us on the North Dakota prairie during the peak of the spring wildflower bloom. Since then, I picked up the kids, camped with geocaching friends in Medicine Rocks State Park in the southeastern corner of Montana, continued with the kids to North Carolina, spent almost a week in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with my family, and then moved back to Idaho.
Yes, you read that last part correctly. I left my job at Williston State College to take a faculty position at North Idaho College, and it’s everything I have dreamed of. I am teaching classes that are interesting to me. There is a much more vibrant outdoor community here, more board gamers, a larger geocaching community, and I am close enough to the kids to hang out with them on weekends. Just about every aspect of my life has improved, and I am thankful for this opportunity.
Of course, my rate of geocaching and hiking has slowed down for now. But as spring approaches and the semester comes to an end, the adventures will pick up. In the meantime, enjoy this adventure on Mineral Ridge with the kids in December. This has been a wacky winter. There has been very little snowfall, and with the exception of one week in January that led to sprinkler pipes bursting in the apartment next to mine, temperatures have been incredibly mild. So on one warm day over the Holiday break, I took the kids on a hike.