Oh, good heavens, what a day this was

We set off one morning for an adventure in the mountains.  We had found some geocaches marked along a ridgeline near Piancavallo and thought it might be a fun way to spend a few hours.  If only we had known what was to follow...

We headed up and followed a narrow road to the path where we began our journey.  Today we took Riley's smaller camera for documentation purposes to lighten Mom's load just a bit (my camera is HEAVY!)  We followed a fairly easy trail and found the first cache.  Ahhh...this is going to be a great day! (even if it is a tad hazy).

Then we were on to our second cache of the day--Lucy spied it!

Children were picking Mom her favorite flowers.  Really...the day could not be more perfect...

We even found a cross.

Wait, is this really a good thing?  Well, let's keep pressing.  The other cache is just a few hundred feet from here.  It's not that far, we can get to it.

Oh wait--it's down this ridiculously steep hill/mountain?

Really?

hmmm... Did I mention that we wandered aimlessly just 20 minutes prior to finding this, following a faulty GPS and in the process Mary got attacked by a bush which stung her on the knee mercilessly?  Maybe these are all signs and we should turn back.

Nah.  Ted can run down there and get it...it won't be too hard.

Let's just say, 300 feet down that mountain and back wasn't pretty, but he did it.  All the while, the kids stood on the ridgeline and got whinier and whinier.  Well, at least one kid did.

Eventually Ted returned to us--3rd cache down.  We are on a roll.  Okay, so there's one more cache down there, and Ted thinks if he follows a trail he can get to it.  But we decide that not everyone can go down the mountain and back up, so Ted and Mary blaze off, and the other three and I stay on the ridge line and follow the trail back up to a road.

And there's little shade, and the water has been well depleted, so our normally cheery and happy-go-lucky Riley is melting in more ways than one.

But Lucy has the camera, and she is now bored, so we have the following pictures documenting this awesome moment in history.

Mom with the gangster look, in the shade of the one tree we found.

Mom and Cory find a fourth cache up here!!!  We truly are on a roll.

Riley is so over this "adventure" and for the second time, tosses out the flowers that Cory has picked and wants saved for later.  I'm not sure what possessed her to throw these out after Cory yelled at her the first time she discarded his flowers, but as we were going through the pictures I saw that Lucy had captured the exact moment that Riley tossed them (that smudge in the air above Riley's head?--that is the flower!)!

Mom's still sporting the gangster look whilst yelling at Riley...

Meanwhile, Lucy takes no less than four pictures of these trail markers.

And she figures out how to take self-portraits, too!

Eventually Ted and Mary returned--without having found the 5th cache. **sigh**  But Ted's legs were looking mighty nice after running up and down the mountain in the tall grasses.  Ugh

And all's well that ends well.  We made it back down a nicely marked trail.

And then rewarded everyone with a lunch and drinks.  Some of us had something a tad stronger than Coke.  And look closely--we had Italian chips and salsa--a spicy marinara sauce and wheat crackers.

Who wants to geocache with us?