Memorial Day

This weekend will be full of people traveling and grilling and spending time with friends and family. And thank goodness because it's summer! I know friends and family that have much anticipated time off coming up and I am so excited for them.

Jared and I just got back from a whirlwind trip up to Washington D.C. He had work stuff up there and so we made a quick trip out of it. We woke up at 3:00 AM to get on a 5:15 AM flight. We were in DC by 9:00 and we ate breakfast at this awesome place called Wicked Waffle. It was SOOO good! And a great way to start out a touring day.

We started by geocaching along the mall. Most caches there are virtuals (can you imagine the potential bomb threats in DC with physical caches?) but it's fun to go to each monument and learn something new. Jared actually showed me a monument I hadn't been to (what???) for the signers of the Declaration of Independence. We also found the point where they measure all the highway miles on the South Side of the White House.

Mile 0!

I love touring DC. I find that each time I go I find a deeper and more mature appreciation for all the Americans that have gone before us to protect our freedom.

My great uncle, who is on the Vietnam Memorial

Hello Mr. Lincoln

Which is why I was a little disheartened by the second half of our touring. 

We went to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. This is one of my FAVORITE places. We got to go look at the gunboat Philadelphia. It was a small boat that helped delay the British from sailing down the Hudson River and split New York from the other colonies. Had this not happened, we wouldn't have had time to raise and train our army to fight in the Revolution. They found it at the bottom of the river 160 years later and brought it to the museum, cannonballs and artifacts and all. It was so incredible to see what these people did back then. And what drove them? This idea that the government did not have the authority to take all their money and dictate their lives.

What was disheartening was the amount of high school students there on field trips that seemed completely disinterested or were talking through the museum spouting incorrect information. It wasn't just the high school students either. While sitting and meditating about the War of 1812 in front of the flag that flew during that battle (one of the most awe inspiring displays ever) there was a mom who came in with her two year old and told him "Look, it's the very first American flag!" 

*Face palm*

I do admire her bringing her toddler to see American History. But I don't know what does more damage...not bringing your kid or teaching them incorrect information. Never mind that she had just walked through the first part of the exhibit explaining the story behind the flag. But apparently she didn't think it was important enough to get her facts straight before teaching her son something. 

I get it. He's two. There's plenty of time to get the record straight. But this instance, combined with several other examples just in the few hours we were touring, just highlighted to me the lack of interest people have for getting their facts straight. It's why political pundits can just spew lies about stats and history and get away with it. Because no one knows if they are telling the truth because they don't know their facts. Apathy is a killer. And it's people's apathy that is going to trap them from their potential as not just Americans, but as humans. 

Americans have built our nation on the ability to identify a problem and create a solution. Then they refine the solutions until it is the best it can be. But I have seen a trend in history where we balked at our ownership of innovation and told the government to take care of it. That's not the government's job and that's why it fails at many of the things it tries to do (Obamacare website perhaps as one of many examples?). 

While standing in the Lincoln Memorial, I always take time to stand and read the Gettysburg Address engraved on the side of the building. Something stood out to me this time. While standing at this site where so many Americans died, he said there's nothing we, the living, can do to add or subtract from this consecrated ground. Whether or not we dedicate this space makes no difference because the blood spilt makes it a sacred place. Rather, it is us, the ones alive, who should dedicate ourselves to finish the work they started. 

So this Memorial Day, I want to take the time to rededicate myself to the work that so many Americans have started. I'm killing apathy instead of letting it kill me. I want to help make sure that the ideas the Founding Fathers used to create this nation stand. We are nation with a government by the people and for the people. Not a government where some people can bully other people into submission. Not a government where we take more of your money to reward those who break the law or don't work. Not a government where we shame you for being "politically incorrect." Rather, we can, and should be, a government that gets out of your life and allows you to build things that benefits  people. Because American history has shown that when Americans succeed, the whole world benefits.

I'm taking time to do that today. I hope you do too. And God bless America so that we may become who we originally set out to be. 

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863

Geocaching: Road to 600

So in case you didn't read all my other posts, Jared and I are big geocachers! Many of our trips camping or otherwise include geocaching. We find it enhances our trips and makes things fun. We not only see beautiful views but we learn a ton historically and educationally.

I've been trying to complete my "Finds in on a day" calendar. Basically, find a geocache for every date of the year, including Leap Year. Here's how I stand to date.

Only 163 more to go!

Naturally, trying to achieve this makes my geocaching find rate go up from 0.3425 caches/day in 2015 to 1.0849 caches/day. You then quickly rack up the numbers. So while it seemed like only yesterday we were celebrating 500 geocaches, 600 was coming up really soon.

Thing was, we had also started a Lord of the Rings themed series while this was all going on. We had found about half of the needed geocaches over subsequent trips. So when Jared came around and asked me if we wanted to not only grab all the rest of them, but to make the Puzzle final my 600th, I was game. There was only one catch...I needed 16 more caches and we only had 10 left in the LOTR series. So we had to make up the extra as we went along. 

But why read about it when you can watch the adventure! Check out the video below to see what the fuss was all about! (Keep in mind, it took us much longer to find the final geocache than 4 minutes, but I clipped most of the stuff out so you won't have to watch 22 minutes of dark screen haha). 

Geocaching Trip to Brenham, TX

In case you want to watch our trip and not read...here is the Go Pro footage from the weekend! While these videos were primarily used for scrapbooking purposes, if you would like to see the places we got to go, you can check out the youtube playlist for this trip below!

So as explained last week, Jared and I went on a camping trip to Brenham where we also attended a Geocaching Mega Event. This was our first ever event of this type and we were very excited!

First of, we ended up camping at Nails Creek State Park. It's not my favorite State Park ever, but it does has a very long trail that goes all the way around the west side of the lake. It's almost 30 miles long if I can remember. Jared and I walked four miles of it the last time we were here. It was pretty, but nothing too memorable.

What was interesting is that they had many of the camping spots closed down because of flooding. So all the available spots were equestrian locations. We picked one in the back corner where there was a little bit of privacy. Good thing too. While we were alone on Thursday night, Friday and Saturday we had almost a whole suburb of people join us. They were blasting music and talking really loud. I honestly don't understand why people do that. It's so inconsiderate and personally against everything I believe camping is about.

Anyhow.

The Geocaching event taking place was hosted by the Texas Geocaching Association. It is an Amazing Race style competition where they hide around 100 geocaches in the area. There are regional teams (think North Texas, Central Texas, East Texas, etc) and those team race to see how many geocaches they can find over the course of three or four hours. There's special points awarded for teams that find geocaches first and things like that. It was a very cool concept.

Geocachers celebrate milestones with coins. Here's our coin from the event!

While we understand that Jared and I are abnormalities for work schedules, we were a little surprised at the demographics of the group. There were hardly any 20-somethings there and mostly older, retirees at the festival. Also, there seemed to be a ton of people that were more interested in drinking than doing geocaching. So much for making new friends that we would want to hang out with.

First event of the weekend.

One thing that was very awesome though is that Brenham and Washington County have a geotour, where they have a list of geocaches at interesting or historical places that you should visit. Theirs included the place where the Texas Declaration of Independence was signed, the cute little town of Chappell Hill, the original location of Baylor University up in Independence and the church where Sam Houston was baptized. We also got to see the location of Sam Houston's house. While it put several miles on the Jeep, the tour itself was incredible. The weather was impeccable and we loved driving through the country side with all the bluebonnets starting to bloom. We got a really cool geocoin for completing the tour (you get clues in each geocache that you then have to write on a "passport") and we loved seeing all the cool historical spots and shops in town.

Bluebonnets in bloom at Washington on the Brazos

On the porch of a store in Chappell Hill where we had to
walk up and down Main Street to solve a lab cache.

Antique carrousel in Brenham

Location where they signed the Texas Declaration of Independence

Example of a clue in the geocache!

Up in Independence at the site of Sam Houston's house (it's actually across the street from us)

 Speaking of cool shops in town, we of course had to stop at Blue Bell while we were there. There was a cool pottery place as well and of course, the airport!

Blue Bell!

Our crew grabbing a cache at a winery!

The other thing that was very cool at the event was the introduction of Lab Caches. These are geocaches that are only available for a certain amount of time (in this case, the weekend of the event) and were field puzzles you had to complete. They ended up coinciding with many of the geotour spots so we were able to complete them in a reasonable amount of time. However, it was sad to see that on the leaderboard, there was a ton of cheating. Someone completed the puzzle in 0h0m. Hmmmmmm.....

Our congrats message for completing the lab caches!

However disappointing our fellow humans can be sometimes, we loved the lab caches and the tour. These were actually the highlights for us as the event seemed a little disorganized with a lack of information and communication to those wanting to come see what it was all about.

Next on the blog, I really want to share our new obsession, hammocks! So look for that in the next week or so!

Details about our hammock system next week!

Date: Day Trip to Waco!

Jared got an unexpected week off of work last month. We took advantage of the time together and we decided to make a day trip to Waco!

We started off by visiting the Magnolia Farms store. We were wandering around looking at some of the stuff, but honestly, were a little disappointed. Maybe it's just us having ridiculous expectations. Maybe it's just because many of the decorations were not our style. But we enjoyed our time non-the-less.

We then moved on to lunch followed by the Dr. Pepper museum!

Cheesin'

Jared picked up the "scavenger hunt" of things to look for while we were going around the small museum. It was so cool to check out the history of this place, not to mention the Dr. Pepper float that we got to share at the end!

They used to make deliveries in this thing!

Another highlight of the trip was getting to do some geocaching! We picked some of the most favorited caches in Waco and got our smiley faces all over the city!

Looking over the Brazos.

My Captain America :)

It was a nice day trip we got to share together. We are finding it hard these days to naturally spend quality time together and we are making an effort to make it it happen! Highly suggest you go visit Waco if you get a chance!

Camping at Enchanted Rock State Park!

A couple of weekends ago I got to go on a fantastic trip with two of my very best friends, Ashley and Amy! We backpacked around Enchanted Rock State Park and had a blast!

Up at the top of Enchanted Rock!

We hiked, had great girl talk, had to take a trip to Fredericksburg for a stove malfunction, and also did some geocaching!

GPS was vital as we didn't have cell service for a lot of the weekend.

Found a benchmark at the top of the rock!

This tree looks like a Toucan! 

For the full scoop (and to see my friend Amy's fantastic doodles) you can check out the electronic scrapbook here!

Geocaching - Geocaching Road Trip and our First Event Cache

This past summer we got to participate in the Geocaching Road Trip Challenge! You had to complete five challenges over the summer to earn your road tip hero award! We are always excited when Geocaching.com does these challenges and this summer was no different!

First was our fun with favorites cache! We found GC4KMTF - Simply Amazed. we won't give away any secrets, but there's a reason this one had a bunch of favorite points!

One of my favorite ones was Let's Get Extreme!

Each geocache has a difficulty rating and a terrain rating. Difficulty tells you how well it's hidden. Terrain tells you how hard it is to get to it. You had to find a geocache with a highest rating of 5 in either of these categories in order to get this souvenir! We went after GC4BVWW - 50/50. We had to climb a tree to find this one!

My husband, flyingag11, up in the tree going after the cache. I would go up after him to put it back!

What was fun about this cache is we made a day of it. We were out at the lake and found many caches along the way which made for a fun filled day all around.

Next up was a double for us, High Five for the Earth where we found an Earth Cache! And we decided to host our first event in order to earn our event cache!

We headed down to the lake again to go after GC1G6F1 - Waterfalls of Lake Worth. What's so great about Earth caches is you learn so many interesting things about the Earth, it's geology, and you see some pretty cool places you didn't know existed! We also had an interesting time learning the in's and out's of hosting our first event. We first figured out that instead of hoping someone would host an event that would coincide with work schedules, we should just pick a date that we know will work and invite others to come along. We also realized some people don't even look at the description and freak out about the terrain (even when we warned them about it). But we got to meet some pretty awesome people which was fun! We had a great time hiking and getting to know each other!

Our geocaching crew!

Last on our list was a puzzle cache. We are not the greatest at these, but we were excited when we solved GCYJNW - Price Check On Register 5 pretty fast. After a few times around the block to figure out where to park, we picked this one up pretty quick to finally earn our...

ROAD TRIP HERO!

We had a ton of fun doing these challenges. It keeps the game fun and gives us specific goals to achieve. We hope you got to participate and we look forward to next year's challenge!

Geocaching Road Trip to Kansas!

One of the reasons this summer was crazy was because Jared and I attended one graduation and four weddings in the span of three months. And most of them were across the country. So cue on of the biggest items on the list...a road trip to Colby, Kansas.

Now this wouldn't have been a big deal except for the fact that the longest road trip I had ever been on was from Dallas to San Antonio. So the twelve hour trek for us was certainly going to put my patience to the test.

Are we there yet?

Of course, we made the trip fun and geocached the whole way up and the whole way down, visiting some of the places we have wanted to visit for a while now. First stop, OKC!

This was a virtual geocache at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial.

It was so beautiful and quiet in the middle of the city.
Finally checked this off the bucket list.

The next logical stop for us was in Wichita, KS. We stopped for food and checked out some of the downtown area. It was very quiet and deserted for some reason. Almost felt like a ghost town except for the random statues of people and animals all around the plazas. We found some awesome and unique historical landmarks while finding our caches.

Travel pooch was not excited about meeting another "dog."
She said he was such a poser!

 Finally, we were able to get to our destination...Colby, KS! It was a cool morning as we did our long run and we checked out downtown Colby and it's unique buildings and monuments.

I guest that means there's liberty here right?

One of the "Oh My Goodness!" moments that happened while we were planning this trip was the fact that I had been listening to Podcacher right before this trip and they mentioned MINGO, the oldest surviving cache in the world. As I was planning our trip, lo and behold I found out MINGO was just outside the city we were visiting!

Cue fanfare!

So cool to be able to check this one off the geocaching list and add it to our favorites!

On the way back, we visited a few other notable caches.

Found this one at an old F14 off the highway.

Earthcache at a rest stop.

Final Earthcache in Oklahoma.

Somewhere over that hill is Texas!

While I definitely had the patience of a two year old on this trip while traveling in the car, it was so interesting to travel across the country like this. I pretty much always fly anywhere (hello...pilot's wife) and so getting to see the places I fly over from the ground was eye opening. Our country is BIG and filled with so many cool people.

Also, the cool thing I got to learn how to use was the geocaching road trip planner. It's a part of the premium membership, but this one tool alone was worth the cost of the yearly membership. We were able to search along the route we were going to take and sort based on location and favorite points. We found so many cool caches and were able to visit some amazing places we would never have known about otherwise. And that, is why we love caching so much in the first place.

We had a great trip, but I am so glad to be back in the best state in the Union...Texas!

Anniversary of a Different Sort

Today is a pretty special day...

Today marks our 4th anniversary of geocaching!

Our first geocache...not the first impression I was expecting!

Geocaching has been so special for us. It's a way for us to spend time together, get outside, explore our community and build friendships with like minded people. Geocaching has brought us to beautiful spots and taught us about history. We have visited places that we never would have been to otherwise had there not been a geocache!

So today, it's fitting, we have been featured on a travel blog called peanutsorpretzels.com! They featured our trip to Big Bend State Park on their #Adventurecaching series. If you would like to check it out, simply click here!

Here's to more exciting trips in geocaching!

Camping at Dinosaur Valley!

Every year for my birthday we go on a camping trip. There is something about getting out in nature and disconnecting for a while that makes me happy! So we packed up the car and headed out to Glenrose, TX and Dinosaur Valley!

Nothing like some dinosaur models to greet you as you enter the park!

In 1908 there was a massive flooding in the Paluxy river where old fossilized tracks were uncovered by years of heavy sediment. A year later, a man named George Adams found large, three-toed tracks. We now know these to be theropod tracks. But it wasn't until 20 years later that a team of archeologists came to study the riverbed and study the tracks. That team found tons of tracks, which then allowed us to understand the hight, gait, migration patterns and, yes, even what hunted other dinosaurs! In the 1970's, the state park was made to help preserve these tracks.

One of the many river bed spots where you can view the tracks. 

These tracks were awesome!

What's also awesome about Dinosaur Valley is they offer primitive camping! We were really excited as we hiked over the river and through the woods, literally, to our camping spot! Part of the trail actually goes along the bottom of a river bed!

All packed up and ready to head out!

I title this one, Mobile-Maddie

Once we got there is was time to make camp. We set up all our gear, ate dinner and watched the stars before we headed to bed. 

Next morning it was time to get up and go geocaching! I was really close to my 400th geocache and so we had a really ambitious goal of getting over 15 caches in two days.

Our little camp!

I am so in love with my little coffee maker!

Hiking along the river bottom

We set off and looked at the dino tracks before hiking up the hill. We found some of the caches on the way!

Spectacular view of the entire park!

Loving the view, weather and company!

Went to this really cool spot as a virtual cache where we had to hike down a gully to get to the water fall!

We hiked all the way over to the other side of the park and found a cache placed way back in 2001! These are really rare and it was cool to read all the old logs. We then found a nice shady spot and ate lunch!

The backpacker's way of preparing lunch!

Feeling pretty proud of ourselves so far!

We helped our fellow cachers out by adding new logsheets where the originals were getting full.

We then hiked our way back over to our campsite, finding a couple of really fun natural pools of water (where we happily spashed around for a while), and some wildlife!

Duchess sniffed this guy out and we relocated him away from the trail a bit.
He had covered himself in mud to cool himself off!

We hiked over nine miles day one. But then we realized we were going to have to find some geocaches outside the park to make my goal. So we got in the car quick and found some really cool old cemeteries...and even drove across a river crossing (safely, of course)! It was really cool to see other aspects of the little town and the surrounding countryside.

 We then made it back to our campsite for dinner. We have some pretty fantastic gear that I thought I would share. We found gluten free MRE's from Alpine Aire and they were tasty! Our bugaboo camping pack was perfect and I loved our new sporks that we found at Cabella's. Multifunctional, they didn't sacrifice on the primary function of getting food to my mouth!

Love our little sporks!

Dinner!

Of course, what is camping without S'mores! No ground fires were allowed at our campsite, so we had to opt for gas roasted marshmallows. Also, it's hard to find the gluten free graham crackers we had in Houston. But, we substituted gluten free snickerdoodle cookies and HOLY COW! Incredible!

Roast little marshmallow!

Perfection

Everyone was tired after our day of play, including the geodog. We called for some "In-tents" stretching so we wouldn't be sore the next day!

Tired geodog

"In-tents" stretching!

Next morning we headed out to find two more geocaches on the other side of the park.

We found my 399th geocache!

Then, we sadly had to say goodbye and pack up our campsite.

Butterfly came to say goodbye!

I'm all packed up!

So is Jared!

Now it was just a matter of hiking out! Easier said than done!

River crossing...again!

Putting my balance to the test!

My final geocache of the trip, my 400th, was the Dinosaur Valley Earthcache! So awesome to learn all about the different types of dinosaurs that used to live in Texas!

We loved this camping trip and had so much fun exploring. We see us coming back and enjoying the hiking trails and little rivers all throughout the park as a way to unwind and relax. Super awesome experience. Hope you get to so someday too!