You might be asking yourself, “What is going on with Rob Staton lately?” If so, then please read on for an update. If not, well why are you on my blog? Bounce.
Alanna had to go back to work last week and I had to… play with Logan. He’s so mobile now though so he keeps me busy. I’ve also been putting as many hat/hat “like” things on his head and taking pictures of him. Why? Well because no matter what the kid is wearing, he is the cutest kid in all the land. Even if he has a pot, plastic wrapper, knit cap, chocolate box or some other random object his Daddy finds to put on his head.
My new obsession that is Geocaching continues to grow by leaps and bounds. I had recently heard about it before I left the States last August, so I’m pretty new at it. But its sooooo much fun. Geeky, but healthy outdoors fun too! So far I have found 22 caches (magic number 23 tomorrow I hope) and I’ve even planted one, which 3 people have already found. It’s just a neat, FREE hobby that gets me outdoors and lets me find places in the area I would have known about.
Today, along with my lovely lady and Logan, I hopped the border and went “caching” in Oman. Nothing too far out – about a 20 minute drive from the border. Out of 6 caches I wanted to search for, we found 4. Two were easy to find, and the other two were…. adventures. Let’s deal with the adventurous ones, shall we?
Adventure 1 – This cache was hidden somewhere at the top of a mountain area. Around the bottom of the mountain was an oasis, an abandoned fort and an OLD graveyard. The clues for the cache said it was easy to find if you went the right way. I didn’t go the right way. First of all, we have a normal 2X4 wheel drive car. Many of the caches are MUCH easier to find here in the desert/mountains if you have a 4X4 vehicle, while some caches you can ONLY find with one. Like I said, I went the wrong way. The wrong way was me climbing up and down, up and down over rocky cliffs. 30 minutes later… I finally found the dang cache. I was so completely worn out that I had to just sit there for a few minutes just so I wouldn’t throw up. I did have a great view of the oasis, fort and graveyard though! Alanna didn’t even yell at me when I got back to the car. I think she could tell I was worn out.
Adventure 2 – This cache seemed pretty easy. You just drive your car down this gravel road and look for a poort. A poort… is a natural split between a mountain where a river probably ran through thousands of years ago. So we spotted the poort and located the cache, but… the… gravel.. was… like sand… and… I got the car stuck. Again. Second time since I’ve been here I’ve done that. And we were in the middle of nowhere again. And our cell phones didn’t work. At least we had water though. After saying I was sorry 10 times to Alanna, I hiked a few kilometers out to the nearest road. After a 20 minute wait, a local guy with a truck came along and a frantically flagged him down. I sort of explained to him the problem (He didn’t speak English and I can’t say much more than Hello in Arabic), making sure he understood I had a wife and baby stuck in the middle of nowhere. I hopped in his truck and we drove back to our car. Well… he didn’t have any kind of rope to pull the car out with. He did however, have the driving skills of Richard Petty. He climbed in my car and did some kind of magical Omani forward/reverse driving thing, and with a little help from me pushing, he got the car unstuck. I paid him some money for his trouble and we were on our way. That was our last cache of the day! I can’t wait to get back to the States to do some homeland caching. There are a bagillion caches in the Concord area!
