Have you ever heard of geocaching? I had not until recently, when my sister's fiance took her on a date to go geocaching. Let me tell you about geocaching. Geocaching is basically a global treasure hunt of sorts; anyone can participate, and the caches are hidden everywhere. Seriously! I visited Trey and our youth at youth camp a few weeks ago, a random small Baptist camp in southeast Texas, and there were 2 caches hidden on the campus. To find a geocache, you need 3 things: 1) A GPS to locate the coordinates and guide you to the general area the cache is hidden 2) A mode of transportation, should the cache be somewhere you need to drive or ride a bike to 3) A sense of adventure. The "cache" is some sort of container that holds a log where people sign their names to show they found the cache, as well as items to trade for if you would like to keep something from the cache. Hence, the treasure hunt!
So, for our "I" date, we went investigating! We hit the road in search of geocaches. Now I will go ahead and tell you before you get too far into this post that we were unsuccessful in finding the caches. We looked at our local park for some hidden caches, and due to the heat and bushy terrain, we gave up pretty quickly on those. We also looked for one in the local graveyard, and I'm still convinced that cache must be missing because, I tell you, I know exactly where it must be hidden and it's not there! But being unsuccessful at locating the caches didn't keep us from having a fabulous time. We have found 2 caches in Canton already, one located in our church parking lot. It is a whole lot more enjoyable when you can find the cache and log your name, but the search is still fun.
Anyway, back to the date. We loaded up our bikes and went to the park first. As I said already, it was much too hot and the bushes were much to thick and prickly for us to try to hard at locating these caches. But it was nice to get a little exercise while on a date! We then went to the old cemetery in Canton and searched for one more cache. When we couldn't find that one, we decided it was time for our picnic that we'd packed, and what better place to have a picnic than an old, old graveyard, right? So yes, we picnicked in the graveyard, and it was fantastic. It was so peaceful, and obviously, when you picnic in a graveyard, that sparks all sorts of interesting conversations. After our picnic, we walked around the graveyard and investigated, looking at all the different headstones and guessing at some of the people's stories based on their headstones. The families with one or even multiple buried babies/children in the late 1800s and early 1900s definitely broke my heart. The most interesting headstone was for a man that was hung in Canton back in the late 1800s. He was a horse thief. He is buried facing North/South, while the rest of those in the graveyard are buried East/West, which Trey explained to me has to do with the religious belief that Christ will return coming from the East. Interesting, huh?
Here are some pics from our date! If you hadn't noticed, "free" has been the theme of our last couple ABC dates :)
At the park to search for the caches
All I could think about was being stung by a red hornet the other week, so I was a little hesitant to search in this foliage!
Picnic at the cemetary!
Relaxing after a delicious meal of sandwiches, chips, fruit, and Mountain Dew.
Our view from the ground. It was so peaceful.
