Friday 15 November 2013

Tyler State Park Camping, Hiking, Geocaching

Our time in Texas is beginning to grow short. This week we are headed to Covington to look for a new house, but last weekend we decided to attend a geocaching event at Tyler State Park and do some camping. 


Of course Pandora decided to hog the air mattress, but luckily she also added a little heat because it was quite cold during the nights, especially Friday, as it was misty and drizzling rain when we arrived. By mid evening it had cleared enough to go find a night cache! A night cache is usually along a trail and utilizes some form of fire tack. A reflective push pin that you can stick in a tree branch. When you shine a strong flashlight at it it will glow brightly. 


Saturday we woke up and had breakfast with friends then headed over to the main event which promised a lot of fun outdoor activities. We chose to go on a ranger led nature walk and had a great time. We saw a ton of deer near the end of the hike as well as ample evidence of the wild pig problem they have here. 


Overall it was a great weekend. After a rainy and chilly start the skies cleared and we had great 70 degree weather. Tyler State Park is a great place to camp. They have newly redone bath houses and the animal life in the park is diverse and plentiful. Well worth a visit and right off the I20 corridor. 


Tuesday 5 November 2013

2013 Where Have You Gone?

So.... I am still alive, and I am still interested in continuing with this blog. But I hit a roadblock this year that made it hard to motivate myself to sit down and write anything. Work has been really rewarding but also much busier than normal. That's a good thing, in the past I have become incredibly bored with my career. Back in school I had the same issue, if I didn't feel challenged I could not bring myself to do the tasks I needed to complete. Even to this day trying to get me to do something more than a few days before it is due is like pulling teeth. I do not consider myself a procrastinator, I just like to be challenged.

Caution: Do not wake ZSandmann
Geocaching is still very fun and important to me as my number one hobby, but I have found fewer caches this year than any since I started. I have attended many great events and hung out with my caching friends though. And a good event is more rewarding than a hundred park and grab caches. I'll certainly up my numbers some when we go home for Christmas and with our impending move... More on that in a minute.

I made my 6,000th Geocache "Find" at the Texas Challenge
My biggest regret in terms of geocaching this year is that I didn't get to explore more places in Texas. It's a massive state and our three years here just have not been nearly enough to see all that there is to see. We are going to try and make a trip to El Paso over Thanksgiving, and if we get our passports in time we might even jump over to Mexico just to say we did. The passports are for a cruise we have planned in February for our ten year wedding anniversary. Ten years!  That's just awesome to me.

Pandora: No context to this post, but... this picture, ha!
Ok, so the move huh? I've been transferred to Covington, Louisiana effective January 1. We are excited and also a bit overwhelmed by the process. But in the end it will be great to be back closer to home. Hopefully there will be new adventures to blog about once we are there. Which leads me to my last point, I think I will try and open up this blog to more than geocaching. That gives me more ground to cover and I'll likely get more stories to tell. One such story is the antique dresser set we recently got from geocaching friends of ours. We've been stripping it and sanding and all the fun things to try and get them in shape for a place in our guest bedroom. When that project is completed I'll post it here.

GC62: Tombstone - The oldest active geocache in Texas. I found it earlier this year.

Until then, Cache On!

 
A Fairy hole or a geocache? You decide.