Yesterday, it was supposed to be only 56 and completely cloudy. It turned out to be 62 and sunny. I was so glad they got it wrong. I ended up taking the dogs with me to drive around finding caches. Two were in fields that involved decent length walks. They just love riding in the car and if it incorporates a walk, then all that much better! I found 6 and there was 1 more I couldn’t find. One I found was the pesky one down the corner – man that one is tiny! Log book is rolled up into a pen cut in half and gutted, stuck in a hole under the fence.
Sat evening, we went to see Bad Education with James, Bobby and Ian. Bobby and Ian had seen films by this director before, and the story sounded intriguing so we went. It was a great film that we all really enjoyed. Then we went for a late (10pm) dinner at Mi Cocina, and then over to Cru for some wine. Sometimes I feel like I’m dragging people along just because I like Cru, but I think everyone was glad we went. Great atmosphere, and we were all just chat-chat-chatting away. In my old age, I’m realizing I much prefer simply spending time with old friends as opposed to running around trying to keep up with a lot of different people.
I have been wanting to do “night only” caches for a while – they employ luminescent paint or reflectors to lead you to the cache site. There are a couple around (not enough!) and Ian was game for having a go at a couple. It took us a while to get set and we didn’t leave the house until 1:30 or so. As we left, it was starting to mist rain. But we were too excited, so we didn’t let a little rain stop us. The first was in a terrific park with lots of trails. It was great fun following the white reflectors – which most people walking in the daylight probably never even notice. We got to a red one and figured that was where we were meant to look. We couldn’t find anything, but we did scare a rabbit so much it jumped about 3 feet in the air when the light hit it! We read the log and realized this cache was “offline for maintenance.” There is a proper way to take a listed cache “offline” and the cache owner had not done that. Still, it took us to a great park and I know we will be back to finish it when it is fixed. Perhaps we’ll bring James and Bobby and all the dogs, too.
We went on to another one which is near Lake Lewisville. Turns out the park is a 2200 acre nature preserved owned by Lewsiville ISD. There was a gate closed, so we parked outside and read a sign that specifically said people were welcome after hours. It was now about 2:30 am, but we went ahead. It was still misting, too, but who cares – we weren’t “Afraid of the Dark” (that’s the name of the cache). It took quite a while to hike back there, but it was great following these reflectors through the dark. Sometimes there were long periods without reflectors, but there were no turns so we kept on. Whenever there was a turn, the reflectors always confirmed where we needed to be. We were wondering what to look for when we got to the cache and speculated that “it might be lit up like an airport runway at night.” Well, that’s exactly what it was like. Suddenly in the darkness, there were tons of reflectors pointing to the cache, and there it sat. There was a lot of neat stuff in there, but we didn’t bring anything to trade. We did take a travel bug, “Jeremiah”, a little bullfrog toy. We had to be careful, crawling over and under downed trees and navigating around thorns. I guess this would only be fun to a few people, but I thought it was really great and can’t wait to do more.
This morning as punishment for being out late in cold, wet weather, I woke up feeling sick. I’ve been on the couch all day and I feel awful. The worst part is that Bobby called earlier and wanted to play some roleplaying games, which we’ve been talking about doing – but I didn’t feel like leaving the sofa. Oh, well…winter will leave us soon. I’ve put some chili on for dinner and James is playing X-Box. I’ve enjoyed just spending time with James and the dogs, so maybe it wasn’t all that crappy a day, afterall. We may watch a movie tonight.