Life's a Stitch

Geocaching was introduced to me 19.5 years ago on the weekend of my first daughter’s wedding. Flying in for the celebrations BIL Greg read about it in an airline magazine, and considering my love of walking in the woods, thought I would like it. We bought a gps that evening and immediately started geocaching. 

I’ve cached in 36 countries, 18 US states, 6 Canadian provinces and every continent except Antarctica. It’s a wonderful way to learn interesting, sometimes offbeat facts about the places you visit.

My favourites include one in Tenerife where the coordinates took us to the middle of a large fountain with the advice not to get wet. Turns out the cache was underground, in a museum beneath the fountain.

Another was with my sister and kids in NH. The coordinates took us to a large boulder. Inspecting every hollow at the bottom edge of it, we were surprised to have a porcupine staring back at us.

On this late December day our hike on the Indio Badlands Trail started with an unexpected treat – seeing a group of maybe 50 beautiful Lusitano or Andalusian horses riding by.

The geocache registered as being 1.5k away, but that was as the crow flies. 

Up we went. I wasn’t pleased that the cache appeared to be considerably more off the trail than described (as a couple of feet away). I was grateful for Bryant’s scouting, determining the safest approach. 

Success:

It was challenging, but parts of our Portuguese hike were worse.

We celebrated with a visit to Handel’s Ice Cream, which has been around since 1945.

Mari with her brownie dough cone and KC’s two scoop: strawberry cheesecake and Buckeye – peanut butter ice cream,  fudge ripple and buckeye candy pieces(chocolate-covered peanut butter) that looked like Reese’s pieces. 

The rest of us had NY Cheesecake, coconut/pineapple and orange/pineapple. Have I given you the ice cream version of an ear worm?