SparkDad

For the second year in a row we have gone skiing. This year was much more fun than last year, mostly because I did not get elevation sickness.

Last year we skied at Santa Fe, New Mexico and had a great time. It was our first year however and the all day lessons we were in were quite frankly exhausting! By the time that the class was ready to head up on the gondola the students are simply too tired to do much.

This time we decided to go to Sandia Ski report which is right at Albuquerque where we were staying. The resort was a little smaller than Santa Fe but it was nice and the snow was great.

Stickman went up the mountain with Big Aaron, his cousin, who snowboards and came down the bunny slop twice before even took his second lesson.

Since I got sick last time I decided to do the never ever skier lesson again. I luckily remembered most of the things that I was taught last year. Mama moved to the next level up and got to actually go down the slopes. I should have moved up to the next class, but did not.

The problem with the lessons is that you spend all of your time “side stepping’ up the training hill to ski down and demonstrate some skill like slowing down turning, etc. After three hours of the lessons I was ready to go for a stiff drink, not ride up the mountain! So I did not ski down the mountain. Next time I will!

Porkchop did lessons and can perform all of the turns and slow downs. He is ready for some bunny slopes with a strong skier. I helped him ski around the area at the bottom of the hill since I could not take him up the slopes. He had fun and wanted to ski more when we were leaving. Next year he and I are going down a hill!

The day was a lot of fun! The entire family had a good time and enjoyed the cold and the snow!

We are thinking about going again for spring break so that should be fun!

If you are interested in going here is some information:

Sandia Peak – http://www.sandiapeak.com/

Santa Fe – http://www.skisantafe.com/

- Spark Dad

Last night while we were sitting around the dining room table shooting the breeze, as we often do at Tia Mena and Tio Shorty’s house, I was messing around with my phone. I clicked on a Geocaching application that I had downloaded and saw there are several cache’s around the house!

Today after breakfast we decided to set out and see if we could find it!

It was cold today so we geared up in beanies, gloves and coats. Uncle Dee got the dog out of the kennel, leashed him up and we were ready.

I turned on the C:Geo App on my Droid and hit my live map icon to show where the nearest cache was.

GC-Code: GC1QCPB

Type: Traditional Cache

Cache Name: Diamond in the Rough

Distance :  1092 meters

Location: Hobbs, New Mexico

Not too bad! We were off walking. We walked about 15 minutes to the nearby softball park and looked at the tips. Several people said they had found it and that it was outside the fenced area. It also denoted that it was a magnetic key holder with a log in it. The most interesting point on the description was that “there will more than likely be a lot of mugglers around”. What the heck is a muggler?  Here is the definition from About.com

Muggle: (or muggler) A non-geocacher. The discovery of a cache by a non-geocacher is a very real problem and a cache needs to have an identified purpose included in the container. When someone refers to a cache as having been muggled, it almost always means it was stolen or vandalized.

So we started looking at the fence.  We went up and down the fence with my Droid compass on but could not get to the exact location. I came to the impression that the Droid’s gps was not exact.

Finally after about 10 minutes of searching we found it! You can see in the photo above that it was simply a log sheet with names and dates on it! The front was filled with about 60 names, so we wrote on the back:

“SparkDad.com – Dad, Porkchop, Stickman, Tio Dee and Nico”

It was great fun! I think later we will search for another one!

If you are interested in starting out in Geocaching you can buy a GPS device. Here is a recommended device.

Garmin nüvi 205W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator

At the time of posting this GPS was only $79.99

It will help you with Geocaching and directions!

- Spark Dad

This year had to have been one of the worst years for Super Bowl commercials. I did however see a commercial for Vacation Rental.org

that sparked my interest. They had a very funny vacation rental commercial.

This site is a travel site that focuses on staying at vacation homes instead of at a hotel when on a trip. This is a great idea and concept. They are very hard to find because there is no unified way to search them, but there are some phenomenal values in the industry, especially if you are going with a large group.

We used a vacation rental on our last summer vacation to Lake Medina, Texas. It was the second year that we rented the same home. The cost was about $1500 for a week and the home slept $10 so for about $150 per person for the week we had a lake front property!

I think that the next time that Mama and I do a weekend getaway we may check into using Vacation Rental.org

See you soon! – Spark Dad