After spending a nice Friday evening drinking at Panino Brothers with Kim and several randoms, I awoke at 4:30 AM and couldn’t sleep. Once it started getting light enough I headed out to find eight caches that were within a mile radius of the house. Being that I needed some exercise after eating a panino or three, I decided to do them all on foot.

Now, I didn’t put much thought into the route, the distance I would be walking or whether or not I’d be doing all eight caches… As I started out down CR-46 I wasn’t paying much attention to anything and ended up in Lakeville Liquor’s parking lot without watching for oncoming traffic. Whoops! Thankfully it was just after 6 AM and no one was out and about anyway.

After a couple of caches, including two in the Apple Valley Transit Station, I stopped at Dunn Brothers to use their shitter. I felt like I should at least buy something and being that I’ve been caffeine free, coffee wasn’t an option so after staring at all the $4 fruit juices and $2.50 milk options, I saw a single can of V8 for 75 cents and also chose a 50 cent piece of string cheese. After bringing the can up to the counter and asking for the cheese, the guy behind the counter looked at me as if I was crazy. Guess that was an odd sight for 7 AM on a Saturday in a coffee shop.

I found a couple more caches, walked a bunch more and made my way home. Overall, the caches were pretty lame but I wasn’t expecting much. It was nice to hike 7.1 miles and find a couple caches over 2.5 hours. I was glad to beat the rain!

Kim and I hung out around the house and then headed out to 13100 Thomas Ave S in Burnsville to check out the house. As I later told the realtor, I really enjoyed looking at foreclosures and seeing what people have done to the insides. We have seen everything from holes kicked in bathroom fixtures to houses in absolute disrepair but with brand new 50″ plasmas with a PS3 hooked up. While this house was not nearly as fucked up as some that we’ve seen, it was still bad. I was hoping to have some photos of the destruction but even though I had planned on bringing my camera, I couldn’t find it in the car while we were on our way.

We ate lunch at the Olive Garden before heading to the Burnsville Center Mall to pickup $9 pairs of jeans at Steve & Barry’s. There was much fantastic people watching including the JonBenét Ramsey look alike kids to the waitress with clumpy mascara who spit when she spoke (I tried not to have her speak when she was serving our food).

We headed home and napped before meeting up with Laura and Kim’s Aunt for dinner at PF Chang’s in Edina. Before leaving I tore apart the house, in tears, because I could not locate my camera that I had as early as 4 hours before. I was seriously concerned that I had put it on the roof of the car and it was in pieces on the road somewhere. After retracing my steps until Cedar without seeing anything I gave up, still quite upset, we continued on our way to Bloomington to meet up with everyone before going to Edina together.

PF Changs was good and I left stuffed. I learned that their chili sauce sucks compared to Satay 2 Go and that I do not care much for ginger beer. There was plenty of people watching there too as many groups were coming in for pre-prom dinners. I couldn’t imagine eating at PF Changs prior to the prom but hey, whatever.

After dinner we went back to Bloomington, spent some time chatting and watching the dogs frolic in the rain and mud and then made our way home. I had a sudden realization that my camera had been out on the porch, all day, in the rain. I rescued it and had Kim run up and get the hair dryer while I extracted it from the dripping wet camera case. The battery charger and case took the brunt of the water and after removing the battery and SD card it seemed only to be damp on the outside. I used the hairdryer on the camera and battery charger and are currently letting them dry some more on the dining room table. Wish me luck for tomorrow’s boot up. I think it’ll be all right though.

Busy Saturday and time for some much needed sleep.

Related posts:

1. Geocaching with Moe the Sleaze and s4xton: South-Metro, MN
2. King’s Island Amusement Park: Cincinnati, OH
3. Geocaching Trip to Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada
4. Three Day Caching Trip Through Wisconsin and Illinois
5. Craig and Jennifer’s Wedding and Caching: Hibbing, MN