-Sunday July 1st Morning-
Sunday dawned overcast and misty. While we waited on the house full of people (4 Canadian adult cousins, 2 Canadian kid cousins, 4 American adults and 2.5 American kids) to all get up, get some breakfast and chill until we could head down to the local park for the Canada Day festivities, Donna and I decided to go for a walk and get our first international cache. As soon as we mentioned the word walk, there came a series of small voices, “Me too”, “Me too”, “Me too” & “Me too.” James and Mady and their 2 cousins, Laura and Anna, were coming with us.
We headed uphill first, so that the way back would be all downhill. There were about 5 caches within a mile of the house, but mostly the kids were more interested in being kids, so we headed for a park where they could blow off steam. Donna and I pushed swings, spun merry-go-rounds, teetered totters and made sure no one wondered off. Finally the rain and wet pants convinced the kids to head back home, but we walked right past it. There was another small park in sight just down and across the street from the house. More playing and whatnot ensued.
We didn’t mind this detour at all because this park also held a geocache. I headed off, GPSr in hand to look for it with James and Laura. Laura spotted the camoed lock-n-lock first behind a fence post. Laura grabbed a hockey trading card and James took nothing. We had accidentally left behind at home all the SC State Park schwag we had collected to drop in the caches out west, so I dropped in a couple of American quarters for trade. And as I was explaining the whole trading thing, take something, leave something, she put the card back and picked up the 2 quarters. Oh, well, they’ll catch on later.
In the photo above, from left to right: James, Laura, Morris the Moose (the RCMP mascot), Anna, Morris’ handler(who makes sure he just eats bear kibble, not little kids), Maddy and lastly, some random passerby.