looking for treasure

We had some good family time on Saturday--we needed to get out of the house as a family and make some memories that didn't revolve around yard work! So, at the request of the two year old, we went out geocaching! We call it treasure hunting in our house and both children LOVE it!

Our first stop was a beach where we put on our boots and explored the tide pools and the sand before heading down the beach a bit to find our first cache for the day. Oh it was sooooo much fun! Although this beach is only fifteen minutes from home, we've never been there before--but we definitely will be back!!
There were jellyfish all over the beach--oh and lots of teeny tiny crabs, too!
It took us a few minutes to figure out what these are...they're geoduck siphons sticking up through the top of the sand. They were ALL over the place too. I think they're disgusting, but they're a delicacy in China! By the way, geoduck is pronounced "gooey-duck"...totally different than what a lot of people think.
We also found a huge bed of living sand dollars. This was my first time seeing living sand dollars--I'm used to them being white and dried out. These were almost purple colored and had moving cilia on the bottom. Very neat! Check the picture out--there were hundreds of them! Everything purpley in the next picture is a sand dollar!
After we were done playing on the beach and finding our first cache, we moved on and found caches in more of a woodsy location. One of the places we went was a great trail system. The children loved this as well--nice wide trails for them to roam down and it was a half-mile loop, so we easily ended up back where we started. It was a gorgeous location that we wouldn't have known about if it weren't for geocaching.
There were beautiful wildflowers along the trail, especially lots of tall foxgloves.
We even found a little sitting area with chairs carved out of tree trunks! Fun! (Don't mind Handsome's tongue hanging out...he was insisting he was a dog!)
We made one more stop before heading home and it was another beautiful location...unfortunately my camera battery died and I didn't get to take as many pictures as usual...but I did get this one!