Adventures in Caching: Challenger Park

This weekend, my husband was out of town on military duty again, so I had the opportunity to make my own plans without considering what he wanted to do. I am on this quest to reach 1000 geocaching finds by this summer, hopefully by the time of GeoWoodstock IV during Memorial weekend. I was looking at the map and trying to find a place that the kids would have fun at and is full of geocaches, and I realized that it would be a good time for us to check out Challenger Park. I had never been there, but it boasted 326 acres of playgrounds and hiking trails, and on a page for one of the caches hidden there, it said, "If you are a numbers hound, this park is for you". There are a total of 14 caches in the park, and something like 364 caches in that entire part of town. I have slowly been combing through that area, but it is going to take me a long time to make a sizable dent.

After breakfast, we packed a cooler with drinks and snacks, grabbed the caching bag, stroller, and skateboard and headed off for our hour plus drive to that side of town. This is a testament to how spread out Houston is. We are leaving from the northside and headed to the southside, and that is how long it takes to get there.

As we were leaving, my son had grabbed a CD case from the trunk when we were loading up, and on the way we began talking about that CD, Melissa Etheridge's Lucky. I was telling him that I used to be a big fan of her music, but I realized when I bought that album that I was over her, and that there is only one song I like out of the whole bunch, Tuesday Morning, that is about the heroes of Flight 93. As I am telling him this, I realize he might not know about Flight 93, even though he knows more about the fall of the Twin Towers than I had wanted to tell him.

This is a child whose dad has been deployed overseas twice during his childhood as a direct result of the events of September 11. I remember having to answer his questions the last time his father left, questions sprung from a hot, dusty send-off event in a football stadium at Baylor University. Four thousand Texas National Guardsmen stood at attention for three hours in the middle of the field while Governer Rick Perry and visiting dignitaries got up and spoke about the reasons we all had to make these kind of sacrifices, as videos of September 11 and bin Laden played in the background. My son was five and he wanted to know why his daddy was going to spend a year in the desert so far away, and who were the bad guys and what did they do, and we spent a lot of time talking about the bad guys and the importance of his father's job. We talked about military heroes, but we never talked about the heroes of that day, and as I told him about the heroes of Flight 93 today, and about the firemen who died when they went into the Twin Towers, and the people jumping from the buildings, tears came unexpectedly and my voice wavered. I was surprised I was crying over something that happened six, seven years ago, but that is the effect that event has on all of us. There is nothing in recent history that has equaled the effect on national consciousness that day possesses.

I was telling him how I would never forget what I was doing that day, how I was driving on my way to work that morning when I heard on the radio the news of the first plane crash, and then the second one, and I realized this was no accident, and how when I got to work, the three of us that worked in the office huddled around the radio, listening to the reports as tears ran down our faces. It reminds me, when I tell this part, how my grandmother used to tell me how she would never forget what she was doing the day Kennedy was shot. That was this kind of event for her, in this time. We would talk about that day, how the men in the family were down at the dock below the house when they heard her screaming, and they came running up thinking that she was hurt, only to realize that the president had been assasinated, a president that they identified with, being of Irish Catholic descent.

I wondered during this time they told me this story what would be that kind of event for me in my lifetime, and so far there has been two: 9/11, as I stated before, and the day the Challenger exploded. I told my son we were going to the park dedicated to the astronauts on that flight, and what did he know about the Challenger? He proceeded to tell me the story in depth, which surprised me and I asked him how he knew that. He pointed at me, and then told me he also remembered where I was the day it happened, how I was sitting with my elementary school class watching the liftoff on the TV, and how there was a teacher on board, and then the famous words, "Houston, we have a problem", and then the explosion, and how we had all been shocked and horrified to see it happening in real time right in front of us.

I don't even remember telling him this, so the fact that he remembers it so well just blows my mind. My son amazes me sometimes, and I ruffle his hair as he tells me other things he remembers as well, quotes specific dialogue from movies that I barely remember a plot on, and we get to the park with a morning sun shining in our eyes and a sleeping baby.

There were some issues getting there. I had wanted to do some park and grabs on the way there, but when I stopped at the first one, I suddenly needed a bathroom in a terrible way and could not even concentrate. We just had to head straight for the park and the bathroom.

We entered the park and parked near the memorial for the fallen astronauts. I almost started crying again when I read "Christa McAullife, teacher". We loaded up the stroller and headed out for the first cache we had selected, "The Holding Tree". This was the first of my disastrous caching of the day, as I took us on the wrong approach at first and we had to come back around to the parking area and start all over again. By the time we got this one, my face was flushed with exertion and we hadn't even covered much ground in terms of what I wanted to accomplish for the day. I was able to drop off one of the HGCS racing travel bugs, though, so it was good.

After this one, we got back on the car and drove to the main parking lot for the playground. The boys had a good time playing on all the various equipment. I had brought a book to read while they played, but that was silly of me, being the mother of a toddler. Of course I had to have all eyes on my youngest little daredevil, who always wants to try the most challenging approachs and dismounts to all playground equipment. We spent about an hour at this part playing, until the oldest decided he would rather skateboard and I decided to get on with the caching.

We filled up our waterbottle in the water fountain and hydrated ourselves before heading out down a trail that led us to the next cache and an interesting art object, the Mother Earth Sculpture. I know art can be all kinds of things, but I never thought that people actually created an art form out of a mound of dirt and grass. After the boys checked out the sculpture and I found the (micro)cache, we all sat on this cool bench swing and just swung in the coolness of the shade. It is amazing how relaxing this was, on par with a massage or a soak in a hot bath. My muscles were competely relaxed and I could just feel my blood pressure lowering. We would have stayed for a long while, except that along came a spider and then we could not relax anymore.

We walked from there down a boardwalk seeking the next cache. This cache must be so clever and I so dense that it was just not meant to be today. It was somewhere along the boardwalk and it's been found just last month, but the oldest was freaking about the wasps in the area and I was feeling pretty cache-backwards. We hit a dead end here and turned back around to head for the ones I really wanted to get today.

As we walked down a grey stone road towards the shore, I realized what my mistake of the day was. I had decided that I was only going to concentrate on five of the 14 caches, so I only loaded those in order to keep me from going off after the others. However, I did not take into account where the trail was going to take us, and it turns out we walked right by the location of two other caches we could have gotten, but I didn't have them loaded. However, by this point the oldest son was complaining that he was pooped out and wanted to go home. He said his body needed "rewinding". We left the park and headed to my all-time favorite food joint, Freebird's World Burrito, which happens to have a location in that area (which, even though it is nowhere close to my neighborhood, I've been to this location about five times). After this I wanted to do some serious caching, park and grab style, since there are so many around here I haven't gotten and I hardly ever make the drive, but the oldest was done. He was still whining he needed rewinding, and could we just go home please? Frustration! We tried one quick one by Freebirds and got another one on the way out, but I gave in to his pleas quickly. My body was worn out, too, though, and I am glad we left, because after fighting traffic home, I needed some serious rewinding myself, on the couch History Channel style.

Overall, I feel like I gave a new interpretation to the phrase "cache-density" today. It was not about the closeness of the caches, it was about my denseness when it came to finding and planning them. I couldn't find two out of the five we tried, and I should have just loaded everything out there instead of a select few so we could have had options open. You just never know where the day will take you. Today, though, the day did take us to some very cool places I had never experienced before, and some places with my son I was able to find new appreciation for, and I am happy about that.