"I had to hide. It was the only way to keep you safe."

Hello, East Coast! (...and West Coast. And Middle-America. And places other than America.)

Apologies on the long delay in blog-posting--we took a relaxing break from adventure last weekend to do errands and meet up with old friends in new places (like the Argentinean restaurant Malbec, which had the most delicious chorizo sandwich).

So, what better way to kick off the weekend than with a night out on the town? And what better place than a restaurant that has not only a dinner menu and drink menu, but a board game menu? Henry's Hat, on Cahuenga near Universal Studios, was a lot of fun. Dinner was good, drinks were okay, but the music and the atmosphere? Excellent. It had the same feel as Bay State favorite Sunset Cantina in Boston, except...with board games!

We played "Sorry!" I never thought this game could be this fun.

I won. As per usual?

The next morning, after a well-deserved sleep in, we hit up the Farmers' Market for lunch. Much to our delight, everything was Mardi Gras themed!

We migrated toward a large crowd that forming around a small stage, and found ourselves in the middle of the most ridiculous dog show I have ever seen.

I give you...Mutty-Gras. An adorable mini-Gonzo banana-shaped dog was named the Queen. When we sat down with our food, a parade began around us, serenading us with saxophones and trumpets. I love right place/right time moments.

Afterward, we played with the adoptable puppies in front of the toy shop (I feel like they're pandering to their audience a bit) until we had become hopelessly attached to all six puppies and their unique personalities.

Later in the day, we searched for inexpensive things to do near Westwood, and realized that this was the perfect time to try out one of my favorite hobbies: geocaching. Usually, caches are hidden in the woods, on or around hiking trails. As the sport (of sorts) has caught on, urban geocaches are showing up in cities across the globe.

To play, you need to go to geocaching.com and search for caches near where you want go. Once you find one whose title/description sounds appealing, all you have to do is type the coordinates the site gives into your GPS (handheld is necessary for hiking, but for the city, our car GPS's and smart phones worked fine) and go. Each cache has extra hints that you can decode if you're having trouble finding the cache at the coordinates.

When we got to our first cache, near UCLA, we needed to use the clues to pin-point the cache. The first clue, once we decoded it, was "Ptolemie III." This led us to a statue in the garden with the same name, and after looking up, around, and down for a while...Mapgar found the cache!

Success. We won't tell you where exactly, in case you want to find it yourself. Inside was a log and a pen, so we signed as "Team LA State from Boston." Some caches have prizes inside--you can bring a trinket to put in, and take a trinket out to keep. Smaller ones (as urban ones tend to be) usually jsut have a log. Which is still cool!

Cache 1: Success. On to cache two, whose coordinates were about a mile away.

The title of the cache took us to the Mann Village Theater in downtown Westwood. There were a lot of people around, so we had to be as inconspicuous as possible. "Don't alert the muggles," the site had warned. Our only clue was that the cache was hidden in a place that would be good for dropping off unwanted team members. Right as we were about to give up, Lauren found it!

Just a log in this tiny magnetized tin! The guys in the green ambulance behind Lauren were pretty amused, I think. They watched us search (okay, we're pretty bad at the covert thing) for about fifteen minutes.

It was getting to nightfall, and since we had stumbled into the best parking spot in all of Westwood, we decided to stick around the area for a bit and go to the IN-N-OUT around the corner. Delicious decision.

After we ate, we had just enough time left on the meter to find the third geocache, which was only two blocks away (or so we thought). The GPS led us down a creepy backstreet behind a fire department, which seemed right because the clue was "put out the fire."

We searched all around the fire department to no avail. Using Nick's smart phone power we pulled up the website again, and noticed that someone had commented that there was a great view of the skyline from this "park-and-go" cache. Hmm, how convenient, the fire department is right next to a tall parking garage with an open roof!

The roof was covered with fire extinguisher stations--perfect metal for hiding a magnetic tin mini-cache. We searched the whole roof, checking out the cool night skyline. Found nada.

We even went back down and searched the police boxes on other floors, but in vain. The cache remained hidden! Eventually, we admitted defeat. Next time, cache...

Still, two out of three ain't bad. Stay tuned for more geocaching adventures later this weekend!