Treasure Hunters

My apologies for the lapse in time… it has been a whirlwind here. Wedding plans, tea party plans, camping trip, baseball season, school… LOTS going on! And, apparently, my family still expects me to do their laundry and cook! Go figure!

The boys and I have started a new hobby – geocaching. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s kind of a treasure-hunting game that is played all over the country, and now the world. You must use gps coordinates to locate a “cache” that usually consists of merely a film canister or small object and a written log. When you find it, you sign your name and the date to verify that you were there, then you go online and log your finds (http://www.geocaching.com/). Some of the caches contain small “treasures” or trinkets, and you can swap out with something of equal or lesser value. There is no real objective to the game, other than to experience the thrill of hunting the treasure, whether or not it has trinkets. There are caches hidden all over the country, and many here in our area. We found two the other day, now written in our log as our first and second finds. It was fun, but I think the boys expected there to be something better hidden in the cache. I guess they aren’t quite to the age where JUST the find is the fun part! There are some families in our area who have logged THOUSANDS of finds… that’s a lot of hunting!

This picture is of our very first find, named “Old Fence Post and Bailing Wire.” It was a small black film canister at a road-side picnic area, wired to a fence post. You can see it by the arrow in the picture. It had a couple of little things in it, and we traded a pink ribbon pin for this little ceramic turtle.

The second cache was in a very old cemetery on Hwy 290, and it had some history with it. Jake found the actual cache and logged us in.

Finding the cache was not nearly as fun to me as walking through the cemetery reading tombstones like these. Notice the inscription on the first one: Was murdered by the Indians

One very simple stone was for Scott Cooley, who was a Texas Ranger turned outlaw that took part in the Mason County war (also called the HooDoo War), which began in 1875 and lasted several years.

Here are some links if you want to read about it. It’s a very interesting story involving murder and revenge!

http://www.texfiles.com/texashistory/hoodoowar.htm
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0010212/bio
http://www.johnnyringo.com/jrtexas.html

Anyhoo… going camping in East Texas this weekend. Hopefully, it won’t be a muddy mess! Then back home for the final week of wedding preparations. I think I’ll be able to rest for a week before the tea party tornado starts, then I’m SLOWING DOWN! Whew!