Leap Day Inspiration

As many of you know, we began geocaching a couple of years ago.  Geocaching is a worldwide game which uses billions of dollars of government satellites to find treasure (and sometimes trash) using GPS technology.  We love geocaching as it gives us great outdoors time and it gives us lots of opportunity to bond with family and friends.  We often borrow Keri and Dustin's van to take a car-load of grandkids geocaching...what fun!

Not only is geocaching fun, it's educational.  You learn so much about the land and country around you.  We often brag that we know so much about St. Louis simply because of geocaching and all of the historical places that have geocaches.  Even in Decatur, where we've lived for so many years, we've found parks and trails that we've never heard about.  Some say that learning something new every day helps keep you young.  We're not sure that's completely true, but we'll have fun finding out!

The cache is right here! ...somewhere!!!

We retired on the first day of 2012.  We began our first retirement vacation on February 19th.  Sister Sheryl had started a blog of some of her experiences so we thought this would be a good opportunity begin blogging, too.  We decided to do a blog for every day of our trip.  Thus we could share the experiences of our trip...but, more importantly we could use our quickly-rusting writing skills and help us prepare for the book(s) we want to someday write.  Thus far, we've kept up the blog-a-day and it's been fun.  But, we haven't mentioned geocaching too much in the vacation blog because, frankly, not all are interested in the world of geocaching and we wanted to focus on other tidbits of our trip.

When geocachers gather!

That brings us up to yesterday, Leap Day, 2012.  Some new-found geofriends  (TravelingHolts) told us about a Geo Flash Mob event to commemorate Leap Day.  We had never been to any type of geo-event so off we went.  We had to use our GPS devices to find the event and finally came upon a small pavilion with about ten people in it.  HummingbirdFreak and Summer Sky Dawg organized and hosted the event and they greeted us as we walked up.  (We'll teach you about geocachers' names, later.  Our is MNM1011, of course!).  Come to find out, both had taken on a geo-challenge to find geocaches for 100 consecutive days.  (We'll talk more about geo-challenges in another blog...themysteryhunters were the first to tell us about them.)  Summer Sky Dawg wrote a book chronicling her adventure and was giving out FREE copies.  We gladly accepted one and found that she had even made each copy a separate trackable!  How cool is that?!?!  (Yep, will talk more about trackables later, too.) 

We loved the Leap Day event and the chance to meet geofriends.  Picked up a few hints and some travel bugs to take back to Illinois.  Thanks to HummingbirdFreak and Summer Sky Dawg for the fun!  (BTW...one of the reasons we keep coming back to the Coachella Valley is the amazing variety and number of hummingbirds here.  We must have hundreds of photos where there is supposed to be a hummingbird in the shot, but for some reason the hummer disappeared!)

This morning we walked to the hotel to have coffee and sit in the warm sun by the waterfalls and palms.  I took Summer Sky Dawg's book, "It's the Journey...not the Destination!" along in case I (Marvin) had a chance to read a bit.  Got the chance to read a bit, but once I started I couldn't stop!  What a wonderful piece of writing!  Summer Sky Dawg took us along with her and Pee Wee (her red and white cocker spaniel) though her 100 days of fun...well, not all of it's fun. 

I read the book cover to cover at the one sitting and thoroughly loved it.  I laughed, I teared up, I learned.  And, I was inspired to start writing about our own geo-adventures.

So, here we begin.  I can only hope my blogs turn out half as good as Summer Sky Dawg's book.  Regardless of the quality, I hope these blogs entertain and educate....and get you into geocaching around the world!

Summer Sky Dawg:  Thank you so very much for sharing your adventure and your book with us!  Happy geocaching to you and Pee Wee!  I hope to run into you again some day so you can sign the book for us.

Enough for now.  Gotta get out there and find a cache or two!  (...or maybe three...or could there be an Earthcache around here?  We have to find at least two more....)

P.S.  We're willing to loan the book under three conditions: 1. You must read it.  2. You must log it in geocaching.com  and 3: You must return it to us!

:-)  mnm