A Geocaching Anniversary

No it's not the anniversary of my geocaching career. It's my anniversary as Vice President of the Hick@Heart family. Yes, I was married on April 19, 1997. What other great events happened on this day, you ask? Let's see........

• 1775: The shot heard 'round the world was fired, starting the American revolution.
• 1897: The first Boston Marathon was run.
• 1956: Grace Kelly married the prince of Monaco.
• 2005: Pope Benedict was elected.
• 1995: Oklahoma City Bombing.
• 1993: Branch Dividian Compound in Waco, TX burns.

We are reminded of the last two every year as the news replays those horrible images. Columbine was one day later on April, 20th. So that gets plenty of airtime too.

Enough with the history lesson. Today also happened to be date night at the gym. You get to drop the kids off for four hours and do adult stuff. The adult stuff we chose was to look for Tupperware, hidden in the woods, with small toys in them. Yes, we went geocaching for our anniversary.

Date night began at 5:00 PM. The kids had their bags packed ready for a night of excitement in the gym. They had pizza and a movie and got to play in the gymnasium. Dropping them off was kind of funny. There were lots of parents dropping kids off for their "four hours of sanity". the parents all had their nice "go out" clothes on. Some were even wearing ties. Only two parents that we know of had jeans, hooded sweatshirts and hiking boots on. That would be us.

The kids were occupied and we headed down into Temecula. Into Wine country. I just had to stop at one cache because it contained a Minnesota Geocoin. If you haven't figured it out yet, Tonka_boy is my Dad and he lives in Minnesota. So this coin is practically family. Well maybe not, but it is a very cool coin and I just had to grab it.

We were traveling the back roads of wine country, through orange orchards and grape vines. The Geo-Prius was put to the test on some dirt roads for the first time. A resident stopped to see if we needed any help. He was very nice and told us about all the planned development in the area. It's sad to say that there will soon be many more houses along these beautifully empty roads.

We headed into the Redhawk area of Temecula and into the Santa Margarita Riverbed. It's a dry riverbed and had some nice trails. While we were walking, we saw lots of large insects. There were some huge ants, even more huge stinkbugs, and some kind of centipede. I was surprised to see these centipedes pay no attention to the ants. I would have thought the ants would devour them. As the centipedes scurried along in the sand, their bodies left a trail and their many feet made very interesting marks along the sides. It looks like tiny tire tracks all over in the sand. That's twice this week that I've taken pictures of tracks in the sand.

We found another cache near a neighborhood park that used a very clever container. It was one of those travel soap dishes. The hider put an excellent camouflage paint job on it and it was quite difficult to spot inside the chaparral. The log book was bone dry and had never been wet. There was plenty of room for small trackables and trade items. It was the first time I had seen a soap dish used as a geocache container. Nicely done.

The Wife and I enjoyed our time alone walking deserted trails and driving the back roads. We found 8 geocaches and we picked up two geocoins and one travel bug. It also seems that nothing too disastrous happened in the news today. Here's to a good wife. One that enjoys a walk in the woods on our anniversary. I wouldn't have it any other way.