Homegrown Texan

Born and raised in Texas, I've found the home of my heart and soul in the Pacific Northwest. I love trees, cool weather, and rain. I'm a back to basics kind of gal just trying to raise my family and find a bit of time to slow down in this hectic life.

My dad is going home today. He's been here for the last 2 weeks, and it has been great. The problem is, I don't think I'd ever get tired of having him here. I've loved my dad fiercely ever since I can remember, and I'm so sad for him to go. I wish I could spend more time with him on a regular basis, since it's not exactly realistic for one of us to live with the other one.

One fun thing we got to do while he was here was geocaching.   Basically it's a treasure hunt for grownups, although kids can play, too.  The short of it is people set up caches in various places and then post the coordinates along with applicable directions and clues to the website.  You download the coordinates into your GPS (or in my case, your dad's GPS :) ) and look for the cache.  You sign the log in the cache, and you can take a treasure and leave a treasure (or not).  "treasures" can be anything.  Proper etiquette dictates that you leave something of comparable value to what you take, but there is nothing to enforce that.  I just like the fun of the hunt (and the fact that we were doing this around the forests of the Mogollon Rim in northern Arizona), but the kids got a kick out of "hunting for treasure".  This is something I hope to be doing for a long time.  It's fun, cheap (after the initial cost of the GPS, that is), and you get to see places you probably wouldn't have otherwise seen.  It did take Dad and I a while to get the hang of using the GPS (note: sometimes it will tell you to drive straight off into the forest, even if you have the "follow road" feature turned on.  Must read map and draw your own conclusions).  But, we have great memories of the "roads" we tried to follow (some of them little more than rough hiking trails).

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