When I was growing up my parents used to take us on rides through the country to look at the leaves changing or to see what was going on in different areas of town. We would ride around for hours and hours, sometimes stopping at the lake to walk around or have an impromptu picnic or climb a fire tower if we came across one.I thought every one's family did this kind of stuff, until my sister, Amanda, invited a very rude friend along. She spent our 2 hour ride telling us how stupid this was and bored she was. Needless to say Amanda wasn't allowed to invite her back over but I realized not everyone had this special time! I now realize one of the reasons mom and dad probably did this was for the family time it gave us, in a closed space none the less! And yes Amanda and I declared war in the back seat and threatened death if you crossed the middle line but we also learned to get along and share and talk and tell our parents about our day and learn things about our parents and where they grew up.
Fast forward 25 years and I want this kind of stuff for my boys, I want these awesome memories, but I'm not a drive with no destination person. I'm too plan every moment, get nervous if we don't have an agenda, go go go kind of person. Then in March we went to Gatlinburg for our annual adult get a way and our friends Mark and Annie took us geocaching for the first time, I was hooked!! This is what I'd been looking for. A reason to get out of the house and just enjoy nature and life and things with my family!! And the element of competition between Alfred and I makes it even better! Since our first find at the end of March we've found 100 geocaches!! We have spent hours upon hours searcning everywhere from the woods, to light posts to guard rails to a little bitty house to greenways and parks! It has been a blast and reminds me of all those hours I spent with my family in the car. And we've introduced a ton of people to the sport ourselves!
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| My mom, sister, nephews, Kingston and Beckett out geocaching across the street from my parents in a cemetery my sister and I grew up playing in! |
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My dad who was made to geocache and if he ever gets a GPS watch out World! |
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| Susan finding a geocache after our run! |
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| Our friend Mel found her first geocache! |
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| My sister, Brett and I at a break in the Ragnar Relay, this was his first geocache but he went home and hasn't stopped finding them since! |
Of course the most important thing to me is the memories we're making as a family and the places it's taking us!
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| Kingston finding his first grocache 100% on his own! |
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| Me finding my 80th geocache! We found 21 this day to make 100 finds total! |
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| We found a geacache 10 miles from our house and had this amazing view! |
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| This is the neatest one we've found to date! This house the actual geocache! |
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| Kingston loves to be the first to open them! |
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| Beckett likes when we find secluded little off the beaten path park areas where he can play and crawl around to his hearts content while we all look! |
We have absolutely loved making memories and seeing so many places we probably wouldn't have seen otherwise! Our friends tease that we're addicted to geocaching and they're probably right but as long as we enjoy it this much I don't see it changing anytime soon!
