GHOSTS OF FRIENDSHIPS PAST

A strange thing happened in Idaho. It was not unplanned, but there were some surprising insights gained from these events.
When we had really started planning our route that covered a tremendous 3500 miles across the Pacific Northwest in a two week time span, destination Oregon via St George, Utah, I had noticed that one path we could take would put us within breathing distance of two people I had not seen in a very long time. So I made contact, and plans to meet up, with an old friend in Boise and an old boss in Nampa.
I really didn't think much of it at the time, just that I was excited to see these people I had not seen in a long, long time. L and I met through my best friend, J, back in the nineties, and I had always really liked her. She kind of knew me "before", though, before all this life changing shit happened to me and I became a person I don't know that I would have recognized. Physically, I am somewhat the same - several old friends remark when they see me that I look exactly the same as I did in high school - but there are so many changes inside my soul and, in my perception, to my youthful looks, that I rarely feel like that person L probably knew in the day.
L herself has changed a lot since I had made friends with her, as well, but even though her appearance seemed to have changed drastically, I recognized her readily when she arrived at the park we agreed to meet at in Boise. I don't even know that talking to her, I recognized either one of the people we used to be in the conversation, except in the parallel care and concerns we had for our shared mutual friends. My mind was sparked by talking to her, though, and I really enjoyed it and didn't want it to end. However, the boys were restless, and we spent probably less than an hour with her, though I probably could have spent the whole weekend getting to know her again.
Then, we went to Nampa, and spent an unexpected THREE hours with my old boss. None of us antipicated this visit would run so long (I had been promising T only half an hour before we could get back on the road, since he was anxious to get to his mom's this night). However, neither of us made a push to get going once we got there, and K slept through the entire visit. Part of this was because Shauna (the old boss) and her partner Mark are just some of the most darned interesting people you will ever met. Shauna is industrious and intelligent, and Mark is laid back and always curious about other people.
I worked for Shauna during the "after", during some really hard years in my life (I think it was exactly two years I was in her employ), and during some years that were difficult for her, too, in my opinion. At the time, she had been trying to keep her alternative health practice for animals afloat in a tiny agricultural town with a dozen other vets, and she had recently lost a business partner and lover, and a trusted friend and office manager who had screwed her over. During the time I worked for her, she had started dating Mark, and at the very end of our working relationship, had a child with him, who was a baby last time I saw him. Now their son was a vibrant, smart young child with many interests and talents, although he was very busy when we saw them.
Shauna and Mark have been very busy and apparently successful since moving their businesses to Nampa. She works out of her home, showing me her the clinic they built in stages that now includes two exam rooms for pets, and another for horses, with a large reception area. They have renovated their home with extraordinary results, and grow their own vegetables and hay. Mark took Ted for a walk, and then Shauna took me, and showed us solutions they had tried for various irrigation and weed control techniques, and it was all very fascinating. They were both in amazing health and condition, and we enjoyed fresh, natural flavors at their house, in the strawberry lemonade Shauna whipped up, a fresh bunch of grapes, nuts, fruit. It was very nice.
And then we had to get on the road, and I thought about this past year, and how I have confronted many ghosts of friendships past in the last twelve months or so. I tried to apply the filter of their experience and wonder what they saw in me. It's been these two, and two months ago, a coworker from the zoo I worked at when I met Ted, and an old professor, a boyfriend or two from way in the past, so many people with their own perceptions of me, most of which I would never know. It is a funny feeling to keep plugging yourself into that time and place, that you who you were at that distinct moment in time, when you were just slightly askew of who you are now. It is all very heady and filled with mystery, the mystery being really who you are as a person in this world, which we tend to think is who we think we are, but is really the combinations of all these perceptions. Who you are has less to do with who you are but more with who they think you are, which is not necessarily the same.
And I think I have the answers to this, but then they swirl around me , questions draped in purple silk and opaque veils, because even though I know myself more than my friends seem to, I will never know what it is I don't know, and therefore can never really know myself. Like I have said before, you hear observations other people make, and you have your own perceptions, but you will never know the things that are left unsaid. Maybe those are the heart of it, the vulnerability that exists within a friendship. But the outside of a friendship is wrapped up in the things a person does say, and in this case, it was hey, I am coming through, and I want to see you. I am so glad these two women accepted, because they were so amazing to meet and spend time with again.

FOURTH FESTIVITIES

I spent my Fourth of July with my best friend and our kids. We checked out the festivities planned in The Woodlands and spent all day swimming, going to parks, and watching fireworks with the kids. The night before, we had gone out to a bar together. Of all the great fun we had during the sixteen hours or so we spent together, the best part, the part I will always remember, was at the end of the Saturday night. Both of the little ones had nodded off, and the bigger kids were outside with my husband and the neighbors, and she and I were just having some girl time. We were standing outside my back porch and she asked me a question about how something I had planned on Thursday worked out for me. We got a good laugh out of the fact that in all that time we had spent together, we had never got past talking about the events of Friday and Saturday. Then, I told her this story, which had us laughing so hard, at my expense, that we were doubled over with our legs crossed trying not to laugh so hard we peed ourselves.
I can't duplicate the story the way I told it. There is something about the written word that is different from true storytelling in person. I'll try to recreate it, though.
Thursday, I had been asked to do a presentation at another company for an audience of people that were much more highly educated than myself on my particular field of expertise. The presentation had actually been moved up a week, so I was kind of thrown off mentally by that, and also by the presence of my boss and her friend, who is the "boss" of the program I was presenting to. In the past four months, I had been asked to give a similar presentation to people within our company, but we are low-tech here and so all the new-fangled presentation devices were kind of throwing me off. On the podium were the microphones and the computer screen with my presentation on it, which was projected on to a big screen with a teleprompter up front on the floor.
There were three presenters that day, and the first one was the "big boss", who runs the entire department and has lots of letters behind her name. She gave a presentation on anatomy and physiology that had me feeling intimidated. Then my boss spoke, also with many letters behind her name, but not as many, and then there was me, with at least half as much education as anyone else and a "fluffy" topic. All these things combined had me a little nervous when I got up to talk. I'm blaming what happened next on all that.
When I got up to the podium and started my presentation, for some reason I walked AWAY from the podium and went up to the floor level, reading my presentation from the teleprompter a' la karoake style. What the hell was I doing? I realized my mistake after the first slide, and headed back to the podium and the mics. However, I was so flustered that the rest of it came out of my mouth like a robot talking. I was trying so hard to not make more mistakes that I was wooden and stiff up there. Also, I was dismayed that all this video footage I had gotten to make my presentation "come alive" would not play correctly.
At the end of the presentation, I sat down in my seat, beating myself up over not being able to "shine" with a stellar speaking performance, when the "boss lady" leaned over at me. I was taken aback with what she said.
"Hey, listen, " she says, "I run this other program at another college, too, and I would like to have you come do this same presentation for those students. Are you interested in doing that?"
Bahahahaha! J and I died over that one. Not what I was expecting her to say at ALL after that!

THE MYSTERY OF HISTORY
each time you'd pull down the driveway i wasn't sure when i would see you again...
On a rainy and wet Friday the thirteenth, the four of us are cruising on into Galveston. Come in on the far end of the seawall, working our way west along the strips of restaurants, hotels, and surf shops. Camper trailers lined the parking spaces along the edge of the seawall. This was a sight previously unseen in Galveston, hard hit by hurricane of late.
yours was a twisted blind-sided highway no matter which road you took then

We were headed for a little place we call "just past reality". See, what you do is you drive down the seawall until you come to an odd little tollbooth in the middle of nowhere. You go on past the tollboth, over the bridge, and drive until you are just past reality, then hang a left and find a beach....

This is what we remembered, three of us girls. Trips out here with boys of significance. A bonding voyage. Pomagranetes, cintronella candles, incense and wine. Now we have grown up concerns and turn to each other in the wildness of nature and the rolling surf.

oh you set up your place in my thoughts moved in and made my thinking crowded

These girls I have known and loved for years. I remember befriending Pegah when I saw other girls, my friends at the time, bullying her. They called her a liar, and a theif, and I wanted to get to know her, because that must have been difficult to deal with, especially when you feel alone. That was eighteen years ago. 1991. I know she is none of those things. She is one of the most genuinely sweet people I have ever met. And just gorgeous.

Lara I had met on the cross country team that same year, or maybe '92. We had several random moments together in high school and the start of college. We lived in the same town while in college and our paths crossed only right at the beginning and right at the end. Then we split for opposite coasts. We both returned home, and ran into each other at the Wal-Mart I frequent some four or five years ago. We've been inseperable ever since, and I love her dearly more each day.

Jennifer is my "sister", my "live in liver", and has been a constant friend since we met at the beginning of college, when we were twenty. She has always understood me best of anyone I knew. In our early twenties, we lived together.

When I was home from college on the weekends, I partied with Pegah. We were all about the nightclubs. Jennifer and I were off on a hippie trip back in College Station. I still had the beaded curtain when I moved off to California...and I had it this night, in my pack...

now we're out in the back with the barking dogs

My big plan was to pull out the curtain and we could use it to draw ourselves a circle of stars, in which we would sit and join together in our mutual energies to help each other. Pegah was going through a rough time, and we've always had those kind of dark energies in our life. We were there to help her, and help each other.

We expected things to be different in Galveston, considering the damage from Hurricane Ike. As we drove west and started to leave "reality" behind, the beach houses looked washed clean to me. They were structurally sound and seemed to be smiling in the light. Jennifer had a completely different perspective, though.

We made a stop at some very odd area just before the bridge, and the toll booth we remember. It was a long walk down a pier that just ended with open hanging ends on both sides, about a six foot drop to the sand below (I was going to attempt to do an earthcache there in the dark). As we turned back, Jennifer talked about how spooky this place was, and we were all a little creeped out when we got in the car.

Then we drove over the bridge, a long trip in misty fog, and hit a "Road Closed" sign. We couldn't get "Just Past Reality" because the road no longer existed. We all kept our eyes peeled for any "Ike Zombies" out there. We were certain they were hiding behind the sand dunes.

Finally we found a secluded beach on which to lay our blanket. Lara had brought the wood, and Jennifer made the fire, with her little headlight on and looking all "Jibber". Jennifer hustled that fire, all eight months preggy, and wasn't afraid to bust that baby belly out when the cops showed up...three times. Four different cars. The first time, I was pulling up my shorts, having been in the process of changing. He drove right up and told us the neighbors would call to complain about the fire. The second and third were buddies, and when Pegah and I got up the nerve to go talk to them, they were laughing and telling us to go on back, we were cool, they talked to the first guy, and now were just hanging out there. Then Pegah and I disagreed the whole way back on if they were saying we could or couldn't have a fire. We just didn't see it the same way.

my heart the red sun

When we were finally settled, Pegah and Lara went to check out the water. Pegah was in her element, I understand. Jennifer and I sat on the blanket together and started singing songs. We were singing old school shit, back from when we first started hanging out, songs from our adolescent youth. We both had a latent Indigo Girls stage. We sang our favorite, "Ghost", then made our way to Simon and Garfunkel, "Homeward Bound," a round of "Romeo and Juliet". She looked so beautiful and "her self" in the moment, and I wondered at how amazing it was that we could still connect like this. How many years we've been singing the same songs.

I ask her what she wants to sing next, and she thinks.

Then she turns to me and says, "What about Mystery?"

It's a song from an Indigo Girls album from 1994, the one I listened to so much freshman year of college, around the time I met her. It is one I can't remember off hand, but know I sing along when it is on.

So she starts it....(lyrics throughout, bold italic)

your heart the moon clouded

When the girls came back, we sat around the fire for a little bit. Lara and I went out to the water. The moon hid behind clouds and peeked out every so often. We waited for it. Lara swore it was beautiful. Meanwhile, the waves kept coming. The shadows of the night air were caught underneath the curl of the foam, and I kept expecting the shadows to continue once the water hit the land, hit the groud running, but they never did, and it was catching me off balance. It was freaking me out. The moon came out from behind the cloud, and I tried to record forever the image of it shining over the waters with the shadows that kept coming, but the camera is in imperfect visual recorder. To the left is how the picture turned out. A blank nothing. Only space held together with little flecks of light. With the flash, it is not much better, filled with "orbs" or some such shit.

I could go crazy on a night like tonight

I pulled out the star curtain, which turned out to be a mess we had to unravel. Meanwhile, another cop pulled up, and shone his lights on us. I was getting freaked out because I kept saying we were going to put the fire out, but Pegah was insistent on keeping the fire going. I kept pouring our water on it when the cops showed up. It is just like us, with me trying to put on the pretense of obeying the rules and her rebelling.

when summer's beginning to give up her fight

But it was the fire that wouldn't die, and in the end, only finished with Jennifer wetting the coals, then covering it with wet sand. And during our time there, we shared energy, passed along affirmations, both for ourselves and for each other, and set goals for the beginning of the new moon, a new phase, a time of growth and new beginnings.

and every thought's a possibility

Together, my friends and I, we dreamed dreams. We shed inhibitions. We talked about what makes us most vulnerable, and how to combat it. We called to the guardians of the watchtowers, and we bid them hail and farewell. I shall never forget the waving arms of four beautiful women wishing away the spirits of the night.

and voices are heard but nothing is seen

And in the end, we battled the sleep monster while driving back to the hotel through the fog of forgotten dreams and reconfirmed visions. We looked around the town for a place to get Jennifer a snack, but all we got for our large circle was to end up back at the beginning, at an Exxon station.

why do you spend this time with me maybe an equal mystery
Most of my friends know how I lament the loss of friendships. Why? I always wonder. How can you be friends with someone for any length of time and then just let that go? I understand that people change, but underneath it all, aren't we still the same people we have always been? Perhaps, though, the bigger mystery is not why friendships end, but why they don't. People don't change, but they evolve, and continuing to maintain friendships involves work, and dedication, and understanding. It involves trust that the person you have evolved into is still someone the old friend can respect and love. In the face of changing life situations, religious beliefs, moral viewpoints, education levels, interests, family changes, children, spouses, how is it that fifteen years later, we can be sitting on the same beach singing the same songs we know by heart as we did when we met?

But I still believe in the importance of history. That's why I hang on. It's like hanging on to it makes it real.

so what is love then

is it dictated or chosen

does it sing like the hymns of 1000 years

or is it just pop emotion

and if it ever was here and it left,

does it mean it was never true ,

and to exist it must elude,

is that why i think these things of you ?

And I am glad we had this night. I will have that image etched in my mind always of Jennifer's singing face in the moonlight, of the feel of the firm beach beneath my body, the incredible feeling of peace when we all closed our eyes and held our minds open to the night, releasing all the negativity pent up inside, of Lara's hair shining with mist in the moonlight.

but i could go crazy on a night like tonight when summer's beginning to give up her fight and every thought's a possibility and voices are heard but nothing is seen why do you spend this time with me maybe an equal mystery

...................................................

oh but you like the taste of danger

We had little bites from sand fleas or something akin when we got back to the hotel, dirty and dusty and dog-gone tired. I think I was snoring before Jennifer and Lara got done with showers. I am so sad we didn't get to sample the liquor Pegah brought from home that I had chilled. I didn't want to bring it to the beach because I had a bag full of candle holders and was afraid it would break. Maybe I was afraid to be responsible for something so fragile.

it shines like sugar on your lips

In the morning, we went down to get some breakfast. It was all too sweet for Jennifer, who has to watch her sugar. As we ate, she decided to see if having a piece of toast with peanut butter would work for her. I don't think it worked out that way. We drove down the seawall going back towards the Strand, and saw people outside everywhere in green and black hats, pulling carts of beads down the sidewalks, climbing out of camp trailers.

and you like to stand in the line of fire just to show you can shoot straight from your hip

Mardi Gras Galveston was about to kick off with the parade on a chilly and misty Saturday morning. We saw the floats as they pulled into position as we drove out into the residential area.

As we drove through the Galveston area, we saw some places that were still badly damaged. Some places that would never reopen. Some were vestiges of Galveston's heyday, like the Flagship Hotel, right off the water.

In the end, I felt like this place had been through a trial by fire, and had come out on the other side stronger. I had told the girls a story I read on the geocaching logs for nearby caches, a story about a man and a woman surviving the storm by clinging to the rafters of their attic. That's bravery, or insanity. I can't imagine risking your life to stay with your home during that storm.

there must be a 1000 things you would die for

i can hardly think of two

but not everything is better spoken aloud

not when i'm talking to you

On our way out of town, we answered some questions for a couple of virtual caches. One was at the Bishop's Palace, which to me looked the same as it did before the storm, except cleaner and maybe with a couple broken windows. The other led us to the ruins of the pirate Jean Lafitte's house, called "Maison Rouge" in its time. Lafitte was asked to leave the US, and fled to the Yucatan. Now his once grand house, with lots of booty, was a few crumbling concrete slabs with a little wild garden of vines running through it. A house nearby had a shed slung carelessly over the fence. The winds of change had certainly bounced things around.

oh the pirate gets the ship and the girl tonight

breaks a bottle to christen her

basking in the exploits of her thief

she's a very good listener

And somehow that makes me think of ourselves, much older than we used to be when we haunted these same parts. I think of Jennifer as a little girl coming here to visit her grandmother. To her, the city is irrevokably changed.

To me, it looks like a stronger version of its former self, maybe with some signs of past distress still, but railing, sallying forth, pushing into a future unknown.

Kind of like us women.

and maybe that's all that we need

is to meet in the middle of impossibility

standing at opposite poles

equal partners in a mystery

we're standing at opposite poles

equal partners in a mystery

A DEEPER LOOK
CANTON AND SURROUNDING AREAS (con't)

As we headed into Tyler that afternoon, I was starting to feel really terrible. During our time at Tyler State Park, I had been unusually thirsty, and now I was experiencing a terrible headache and had a strong desire to lay down. I am not sure what was wrong with me exactly, but Lara was convinced that mexican food was just what I needed. She knew of a place that might be dog-friendly, or at least we could eat near the dog, and it was on the south end of town. We were coming from the north and for a small town, there were a tons of lights and congestion. I felt awful and it took about all I had to keep driving.
We tried a cache on the way, and even though we looked hard, we couldn't find it. This was a premonition of things to come. I guess I was just having a really off day.
We sat on the deck of the mexican food restaurant, and even though I was totally into my burrito dinner, soda, and girl talk, (he-llo queso with taco meat!) I couldn't stop obsessing about my dog. It was a nice day, about eighty degrees outside with a breeze, and the windows were half-open in the car, where he had to stay (apparently it is not that dog-friendly). I had requested we sit outside in the patio, even though they didn't typically use that area this time of day, so I could keep an eye on the dog. That is exactly what I did, and every move he made I interpreted as some kind of discomfort. It was completely irritating Lara, and even when she asked me to stop worrying, I couldn't let it go. It's the whole vet tech thing, or mom thing, always worrying about the dangers of particular scenarios, liking leaving a dog in a closed car, of heat stroke, of not being able to let go of the need to keep things safe for my little ones.
When we left, we tried caching again, but luck, or skill, were not with us. I finally started to feel a little better, but looking all around, up and down, for little urban micros was just not comfortable with a full stomach. We did meet some really nice couples at a park we stopped at, who came over and introduced themselves because they wanted to pet Scout. He was quite the hit at the park. We finally had to explain geocaching to them because we just looked too odd looking underneath the bleachers they were sitting on.
Eh, then I just wasn't in the mood anymore. We did get one find after all that, one easy cheesy but interesting virtual that had been recommended to me called Rose Hill Tombstone. We had a good time driving through the cemetary it was in as the sun was setting, and got off some great shots of Jesus there in the setting sun before I had a gastronomical situation and had to get somewhere more private in a hurry...
Now it was time to start looking for a spot to engage in Lara's newest hobby, stargazing. We decided to start heading out west towards Canton on the backroads but to keep an eye out for the perfect place to set up the telescope. The sun was just starting to go down and time was of the essence, because the idea was to be all set up when the stars started to come out.
When we would come to a crossroads, we kept elected to take the road less taken. The road that looked less populated, was away from any lights from the town, stores, lots of cars. The road that may or may not take us back to Canton. I lost all sense of where we were but kept trying to make sure I was headed in the right direction - when in doubt, go north, or west. It was getting darker and we were getting more desperate for the perfect place. We started taking little side roads off the back roads, side roads that would turn out to be filled with potholes, or dead ends, a bunch of roads that led to nowhere.
We kept seeing these signs for historical markers or cemetaries, but when we would reach where the sign indicated, we could see nothing. We even backtracked to one thinking surely...surely this would be a perfect spot....nothing. Finally we came to a place that was BOTH a historical marker and a cemetary, with ample parking, that was actually there, which was good timing because our bladders were about to explode.
While she was setting up the telescope, I was taking care of some personal business. Then the dog starting limping, which luckily turned out to be thistles stuck in his pads, but I was kind of torn between putting him back in the car or taking him with me out to the middle of the graveyard where Lara was. I was still kind of caught up in some text messages when I realized Lara was having a meltdown because I had left her all alone when she had wanted to share her hobby with me.
Ah, we weren't seeing things the same way, and she was really upset and I really didn't know how best to calm her down. She packed everything up and was insisting we go back to the hotel, since I was so tired, but by this point, I was into what we were doing and wasn't really wanting to go back without seeing this stargazing thing in action.
Finally I convinced her I was willing to share her interest, and by this time we had made it back to Canton, and I decided to try going up this little hill I had seen behind the dog show grounds.
So, after all that driving and drama in the darkness, we end the day where we started it, at the First Monday Trade Days grounds. We got the telescope set up and the moon looked like a slick sugary candy to me. Mostly I watched Lara, moon glowing large against her profile, as she tried to get a good view of twinkling stars. I was fascinated by the way she looked to me, but I could not get the camera to recreate the image I was seeing.
I'm glad we went. It was the perfect place for this kind of activity. I will remember this part of the day for a long time. Someday I hope we can find that old cemetary again, too, because that was a cool place.
Stargazing seems like a pretty neat hobby. I couldn't stop thinking about my microscope that I use every day at work, and how all this time I've been thinking about how with it, I am looking in at a world so small most people aren't even aware it exists, but in it, organisms are eating, reproducing, fighting, living out their little lives. I feel like I imagine God must when He looks down at our world.
Up here, though, there is a whole other world, a great giant world we can see through the telescope, and gain an understanding of life and God and how amazing this universe is. Through its lens, we can get a deeper look at ourselves and our place in this great galaxy.

A DEEPER LOOK
CANTON AND SURROUNDING AREAS
Tyler State Park

Around one pm, we pulled up at Tyler State Park. We had never been there and wanted to check out the park, do some hiking, and find three geocaches. One of them was a multi-cache called A Deeper Look. It took you to four places within the park that go unnoticed, and each waypoint had information about the park and natural features in the direct area you were standing in.
The first waypoint was about two hundred feet from the ranger station. We didn't bring any of our supplies, and made the quick find. It was interesting to read the information in the thermos jug we found that told us about the Civilian Conservation Corps role in creating a small wading area for children and the old fire rings.
The next waypoint was 0.65 mile further into the park, so we drove closer. Lara kept saying she didn't mind hiking but I was telling her that my previous experience caching in state parks was to conserve energy and park as close as you can, because trails lead you further places than you are intending, or that you might spend time walking down a road in the park instead of hiking trails, and that was a time drain.
Our second parking area was close to both the second waypoint and another cache, Prairie Dog Getaway. We found the second waypoint of the multi, another thermos jug with a card telling about the bridge you can see in the back of this photo I took of a friend's travel bug that I wanted to leave at the cache.
We hiked up a greenbelt area and then climbed a small hill to the prairie dog cache, and found a nice, large ammo can underneath a large fallen tree that made a nice place to sit for a while and enjoy nature. Scout posed for photo ops with the travel bug and cache.
After this, we headed to the third waypoint, and then on to the final. We were so excited to finally have the coordinates (each thermos jug had, on the card inside, coordinates to the next step of the journey). We took off all happy, even though finding a parking spot for this leg was tough. We were parked near an access road that was blocked off, some kind of digging going on. We headed down the main road briefly before heading up another greenbelt, then a turn off to the right that led back to the blocked off access road. The scenery was nice (top and bottom pictures), but we could not get closer than about 450 feet from the final cache.
We all three tried to get into the woods and only ended up getting frustrated and covered in little green sticky seed pods. We had them all over our pants, and Scout had them all in his freshly groomed coat. He was trying to lick them out of his fur and kept coughing, and apparently they were deeply imbedded in Lara's pants. I had on jeans, so I was doing slightly better.
We decided we had gotten too intimate with nature. After trying a couple different angles, we realized we could not access the cache and after all that, would have to take a DNF on it.
Note - after logging my DNF online, I saw that the next person behind me, that same day, logged it as "Found", even though he only completed the first two steps. I am not sure if doing the same thing violates my own cacher's set of ethics.
We did have a great adventure, but the seed pods were almost the end of Lara. We pulled up at the parking for the third cache in the park, and she decided to abstain and hang out in the car pulling seed pods off her pants. I did that one on my own with Scout. We crossed a wooden bridge and ended up in the forest by the lake, and I had a mild freakout because I heard a large animal moving slowly through the forest. I found the cache, and also found large prints in the ground and lost the trail back. We crashed through the bushes, Scout giving me a "mom, please.."pained look and getting more thorns and burrs in his coat.
After this, we discovered the joys of the dog brushes. I pulled a few out and I brushed Scout, then helped Lara brush the pods off her pants. We were much happier chicks, blasting Erasure and checking out the park on a grand geocaching adventure.
After this, we took on Tyler. More to come later...

A DEEPER LOOK

CANTON AND SURROUNDING AREAS

6:15 pm Friday night

"How soon can you leave?"

"My bags are packed and I'm just waiting on you."

"On my way"

7:00 pm

Stuck in traffic in Conroe

Highway lane closures, construction

We stop at an urban micro geocache,

Tucked away near the place that water flows

A camo nano, with three DNFs on last logs

But I make quick work of it

Looking under the surface of things

To find the "something different"

"You're getting pretty good at this!"

Today, at least

8:00 pm

We finally get to Centerville, and food

Whataburger never tastes so good

And we settle into deep conversations

About life, women, love, our selves, our men

People we used to know

As she and I went to the same high school

Hung out with peripheral friends

We put life up to the microscope

As we cruise down life's highway

10:30 pm

Finally arrive at the Super Eight

So tired but stay up late

Talking and watching hotel TV

Get up in the early morning

And head to dog show

At First Monday Trade Days grounds

Scout tries, but it's not enough

This day he takes second out of four in his class,

"Open Blue, Dog"

Funny things you only hear at the dog show,

Snippets of conversation that make sense somehow

Like "Do you want to do that open bitch?"

Or "Oh, we're thirty minutes past Carol"

After the dog show, it's bison burgers from the Dairy Palace

And refreshing back at the hotel

Before heading out east to Tyler State Park

Best Western Adventures

Series 6

MISSO NATION

Heading southeast after passing The Peninsula, we see Horse Mountain on our left, and it is time to start looking for the turnoff to "Misso Nation".

This is the name used to refer to the little ranch of David Porter Misso that he has called home since June 1st, 1974. He is our friend and a local legend. Always a gamble that he's not home--he has not until recently had a telephone in his house and it's about a 50% chance of seeing Misso, since there is never a pre-visit phone call to insure he is home. This time he wasn't, so while leaving a written note for him on his door, what luck!, Misso makes his way down his driveway. Another 5 minutes and we wouldn't have seen him.

Dave Misso has been a friend of the family for as long as my husband remembers, and has been a father figure to my husband himself. Misso has worked for the school in Tulelake for decades, and countless children have grown up remembering him for his unique personality and the way he makes them laugh.

Locally, he is also known for his political involvement and outspokenness. He writes a monthly newsletter, "VINTAGE MISSO", that is mostly dedicated to his ideas on politics and popular culture which he sends to hundreds of households all over the country, perhaps the world. We get our copy monthly and read the updates on what the "Democraps" and "Republicants" are doing lately, as well as what happens to be on Misso's mind regarding celebrities and popular figures. Misso is not afraid to tell the world what he thinks, even though often it may be in the minority view or not fit easily into any category. He tends to favor the Libertarian or Independent party candidates, and in recent years has been running for local political offices.

He is a Vietnam veteran ('70-'71) who supports the soldiers who serve, even though he might not support the war effort itself. The VINTAGE MISSO always includes the latest count on the number of American troops who have died in Iraq.

He is also one of the most well-read people I have ever met, and his library is museum quality. He has arranged the texts by subject and category. I could spend hours reading over here and am always a bit envious of his collection, especially when I saw the section to the right. He has Kerouac, Kesey, Tom Robbins, and Hunter S. Thompson volumes lined up together. I had read all the books he had by those authors except Thompson, whose "Gonzo journalism" is emulated in Misso's writing. Seeing this shelf has inspired me to read more Thompson.

Misso writes over 200 letters a month, and has had letters-to-the-editor published in several prominent magazines, most recently National Geographic. My husband enjoys collecting the magazines and having Misso autograph his copy.

Technicially, we should refer to his as Reverend David P. Misso, since he has been an ordained minister since 1976. He has officiated at over 100 services, including many of my husband's family's, and recently performed his first same-sex union (allowed by recent California same sex marriage ruling). Since we had our marriage in Texas, he did not officiate, but contributed a lovely poem for the service which we still have a copy of.

He also, until very recently, continued to live "off the grid", without electricity or a running toilet. In the past few years, Misso Nation has experienced some changes, and we no longer have to use the compost toilet when we visit.

We always drop by when we are out in the area, so of course we made no exceptions on this trip. There is always a walk around the inner perimeter to see the latest additions to the farm and engage in outdoor activities. This time Misso gave Kaleb a bubble blower and they spent some time making bubbles.

Although we just dropped in on him, Misso spent a couple of hours with us visiting. We have lots of memories visiting him here. There is always something special about it, whether it is eating hamburgers under a shady tree, hanging out in the sweat lodge late at night, or lighting the candles on his Christmas tree.

Speaking of Christmas, he has dressed as Santa Claus for over two decades, visiting children at homes, schools, and indoor/outdoor functions throughout the Klamath Basin. In fact he once performed a Christmas marriage dressed as Santa, and he officiated a ceremony dressed as Richard Nixon on a Halloween night, with the entire attendence (husband and wife included) dressed in various costumes. Only Misso!

THANKS FOR A GREAT VISIT, MISSO, AND WE HOPE TO SEE MORE OF YOU SOON!

Trip to California and GEOWOODSTOCK VI

When thinking about how to put this trip into words, I thought at first I should do different stories to concentrate on the many different things I wanted to talk about. I know most of my readers are curious about the geocaching aspect, and I thought I would talk about that seperate from some of the travel and sightseeing adventures, but when I thought about it, I realized I couldn't write just about the caching without talking about the elements behind it - where we went, what we did, what we saw and experienced. So here is the entire version of the story of the weekend trip to (cold) sunny California, all aspects included.

Early Friday morning, my oldest son AJ (aka "happyhunter99") and I boarded a plane bound for San Francisco. I have been researching this trip for months now and hand-picking places to see and caches to find. We had about three or four hours in San Francisco proper before we needed to head across the Bay Bridge to beat the traffic out of town. In this time, I had plans to meet an old friend for lunch, some sights I wanted to see, and had bookmarked 13 caches. I know, it was a little ambitious, but isn't that just like me?
I was totally unprepared for certain slow-downs on this part of the trip. It took us an entire hour from the time we got off the plane to make our way through the airport, take the train to the rental car station, and get through the line to finally get our car. When I left the airport, I was stressed out already and thrown for a caching loop. I thought I had enough time to get to some locations before meeting my friend, but this was one of my first lessons in caching while traveling: sometimes the way the city looks on Google maps gives you absolutely no idea of how it is going to be to travel in. Downtown San Francisco is rather small - it is only seven miles by seven miles - but it takes a long time to navigate around because of the many pedestrians, one way streets, congestion, traffic lights, trains, and trams. When I first got in communication with my friend, I was only three miles from the Haight district where I wanted to stop first, and two miles from where I needed to meet her, and I had thirty minutes. Plenty of time!

Not in San Francisco time, apparently. After a failed attempt at a cache, a brief look around Haight-Ashbury, somehow taking a wrong turn that took me on a freeway I couldn't get off until I was miles down the road, and struggling to find a cheap but close parking lot, I ended up being 45 minutes late to our meeting spot - Mario's Bohemian near Washington Square. It was really great to see Amy again (Old Friends Episode II). I first met Amy in kindergarten. We were in the same class, and she was one of the tallest girls. I remember she had to stand in the back when we did our class photo. We ended up becoming close friends in junior high. She moved to the Bay area when we were around sixteen, and I have only seen her a handful of times since - twice she visited us (Mari and I) in Spring, once we visited her in Austin, Jennifer and I visited her in Boulder during our college years, and only in Austin twice since.

After dining in Marios, we introduced Amy to geocaching with a cache right across the street, In the Square. We were walking down the street after this and Amy and I briefly talked about my location and memory theory, and she tells me, "And it's not just location, that mind of yours is like a steel trap!" Ironically, she had to remind me what I came to this specific area for, the main reason I chose to fly to San Francisco for this trip: City Lights bookstore!
It was a short walk to the indie bookstore founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953. Ferlinghetti later founded City Lights Publishing, which published Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems, among others.The upstairs wing has a beat section that baffles the mind. I chose a Kerouac biography through his letters and a pocket book of beat poetry, which seemed fitting. Amy caught this picture of me shoudler to shoulder with my favorite writers: Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. After this she took some pics of me in Jack Kerouac alley. I could bore you with photos but let's move on. This ain't no Kerouac On the Road show. We drove through Chinatown on our way out . As we pulled on to the Bay Bridge, I felt the tension start sliding off my body. The traffic was not bad at all, we just breezed along, so I suggested we stop at Treasure Island. There are quite a few caches there, but I only bookmarked this one: What A Sight! It was a virtual cache, meaning there is no actual container to find, but you have to obtain some information from the area to answer a question or two. After this, we were booking along, grabbing three quick and dirty finds, before getting stuck in this terrible traffic along I-80 between Vallejo and Davis. We covered probably five miles in an hour, I am guessing. Sucked. AJ was sleeping and I was calling people, looking to escape this madness.At this point, I am really behind schedule to make the Friday Night Meet And Greet event. An Event cache is one where finders get credit for showing up at the coordinates for some fellowship, meeting each other face to face. Suddenly the lanes are clear, and I start trying to make up for lost time. We reach a point where I am anxiously watching the nine miles away compass on my GPS start going up. I get up to ten miles away and realize I missed my exit, and took the residential area main artery back up to where I needed to catch the other highway. This cost me more valuable time.

AJ and I arrive at the Meet and Greet as everything is being packed up. They let us buy the last plates, and we eat cold hamburgers at a silent picnic table and wonder why nobody is talking. I am flashing all the signals: a warm smile on eye contact, a question, a friendly interest, but mostly the groups are contained among themselves. Mind you, at this point most people have left to go caching. I wish we were, but the kid was pooped.
We check into our hotel in Rocklin. We had gotten six caches (counting the event as one) and needed seven more to reach our 1K milestone. AJ watched TV as I plotted and schemed. I decided on a LetterBox Hybrid called The Color of Roseville.Letterbox Hybrid: a cache in which one uses clues instead of coordinates. In some cases, however, a letterbox has coordinates, and the owner has made it a letterbox and a geocache (hybrid). In letterboxing, you stamp the log with your personal stamp and stamp your journal with the one in the cache.

I didn't have a letterbox hybrid icon on my profile yet so I decided to give it a try. This one was really fun. But we had to get there first, and that meant doing six caches between 7:30 and 8:30 in the morning. It was drizzling, damp, and cold this morning, but we bared it and saw some cool caches. This one, Cosmos, was a micro near some interesting sculpture.

Finally, we were at 999 and it was time. I found a parking spot, then moved to another, and drove around a third before parking. It just didn't seem right, and as we walked from parking, we thought we were on someone's private property and were trying to hurry. Turns out once you get to the starting coords, they lead you right back to that spot. We walked right past the cache on our way in unknowingly. We had to look for certain types of trees, then six boulders, and it was behind the last boulder, right near a parking lot. I had made a sign with the clues sheet I had with me, but of course you can't read the big "1000" on there.

We were going to go back to our hotel after this but I suddenly wanted to make it to the event. It had started already and I was anxious to pick up my packet. We found some caches along the way, and other cachers as well, starting at the first cache we stopped at. A German man recently from San Jose ended up doing six caches with us along the road, and we met up with another family along the way as well. Four caches were along an idyllic coutnry road, complete with bubbly brook and dusty trails.
A lone cowdog chased our tires. I wondered how tired he would be at the end of the day.
The last cache before the event, coming into town at the Dairy King or something like, I briefly looked and didn't feel like doing it. It's a game, and sometimes I don't like to play. Sometimes I am no good at it. The German and the dad and boys didn't stop at this one, and I was walking away muttering something I said to AJ this morning about how if I am no good at it, why do I play? But just then another group of cachers came up and suddenly I spied it and walked right to it, making me look like the hero when previously I just looked silly.Finally we pull up and get ready to enter the festival. Here is the main event, GeoWoodstock VI, held at Bishop's Pumpkin Farm out in Wheatland, CA. The pumpkin farm was the perfect venue for this. There was plenty to do and see, and it was so large and spread out you were never bumping into people. It had the feel of an outdoor festival in your hometown, where you never know when you might run into someone you vaguely remember. The live music was good, and the company choice.

They also had lots of activities for children to do. AJ was given a letterboxing sheet, in which he had to follow clues to fill the squares on his page with unique stamps found inside a container hidden in each of the areas of the farm. He panned for gold, went down a large slide, checked out the petting zoo, and made friends with a boy named Will that he wanted to follow around all day. At every point the first hour, I was talking to people, trying to fill in my Bingo squares. At geocaching events, they often give you a bingo card as an icebreaker, where only those who have had the experience listed on the square may sign, things like "hiked more than five miles for a cache" and "Has over 5000 finds". By asking people to sign your squares, you are learning something interesting about them right off the bat. I met all kinds of people that way and had many random coversations that started with that Bingo card. I turned it in midday in exchange for tickets for a drawing later in the afternoon.

I found the petting zoo to be the biggest draw for us. There were clever little signs on each exhibit telling stories about the animals. I took all kinds of pics, but this is probably one of the cutest.

We walked around the vendors for a while. It was so hard to resist, and then, once I decided to buy something, to choose. I ended up buying a coffee travel mug with the geocaching logo on it, cache stickers, three nano caches, the premiere issue of Geocacher Magazine, and some other little things for a grand total of $25. I also got to see the "holy grail" of caching - the legendary "Can O Beans". This can is the only remaining item from the first geocache hidden in May of 2000 by Dave Ullmer. This can is kept, as you see, in a hermetically sealed container and supposedly it is a travel bug, although when I asked about this, the people at the booth shrugged their shoulders at me.

Around midday, we left the festival to go grab some caches. The organizers had hidden six new ones for the event with a "card run" activity, and for each card you brought back, you got another ticket for a chance to win an item. We ended up grabbing about thirteen caches in an hour, which is great timing for our team.

It was the funniest thing to me to see the geocachers descend upon this tiny little town. They probably thought we were nuts. Every cache I pulled up at, I was either meeting people there or holding a cache as someone drove up. Great hordes of cachers were stopping along roadsides to get out and look around landscaping and signs for tiny little camouflaged containers. Often there was this "telephone game" moment, a relay of information about where the cache was hidden. You didn't want to be the last one holding the cache, because then you were responsible for explaining to the person who would drive up as you sign the log where to put the cache back. I met so many people while out caching that day, most of whom were from San Jose or somewhere else in the Bay Area. When I came back, we found Will again and AJ and Will played around the little farm.

Right when I had walked in, I saw MaxB On the River manning the travel bug station. I came by to introduce myself to him. I had a geocoin that wanted to go to him and he was carrying one of my bugs, Travelin' Tin Man. He gave me my bug back, and later asked what I was going to do with it now. Isn't that the burning question? I participated in the travel bug exchange midday. I ended up dropping ten traveling items in the bug exchange. The Texas bin only had two items in it. I ended up mostly taking bugs bound for Florida, where I am going in about two weeks. I was so mad at myself, too, because I had left my sheet in the hotel with the phone numbers of the people who were carrying my bugs. They said if they didn't hear from me, they would drop them in the Texas bin, but I didn't see them or hear about them all day. I want to talk more about what happened to my bugs and the bugs I dropped, but will save that for another entry. But here was the coolest TB of the day: Signal the Frog.
I had started getting hungry midday, but we had the late meal ticket. Quite a line was forming, so we opted to take the train ride instead. It took us past some perfect pigs, goats at play, beautiful ponies, almond trees, and the cachers sitting down to eat. When we got back, it was time to get in line. I showed off my First 500 Geocaching Scrapbook for discovering and talked to the people next to me. As I walked to the trash can, I realized I was looking at two people who fit the description of Rock&Crystal, part of the team responsible for bringing you this year's GeoWoodstock and who also hid a cache I was the FTF on four months after they hid it.

I walked up to them and introduced myself, and just then MaxB On the river approached, so I got a great pic of the two "celebrity" geocaching couples. MaxB is the top travel bug mover in the world. They take some awesome pictures of the bugs and tell little travel jokes, and they tag all the TBs they move. Rock&Crystal and the other members of the GeoWoodstock VI Planning Committee deserve a big hand for this one.

We stayed until about five or six pm, and then we took off and grabbed caches on the way back to the hotel room. We ran into people all over the place at first - nothing like a line of seven cars all heading down the same deserted road to head for the same remote spot. Our grand total of finds for the day was 32, which is our personal best daily record.

I had wanted to go to the GeoCoin SwapMeet event after we rested for about an hour, but after bouncing around for 45 minutes, AJ announced he was so tired and wanted to go to sleep. We had a big day the next day. We woke up early and drove north to Lincoln for a breakfast with the geocachers at the Waffle House as a last event before heading out of town. I heard all about some cool puzzle caches in San Jose. We left around 8:30 and stopped at one cache along the way, then checked out of our hotel and began our great caching road trip back to San Francisco.

We started out in the town of Auburn and worked our way into the Auburn State Recreation Area along Highway 49. We found many caches along this highway and the entire drive. Some of the highlights were:

Down Murphy's Driveway and Murphy's Gate: right when you enter the recreation area, these little caches were along a trail that was marked with a warning sign about mountian lions and rattlesnakes. The mountain lion thing had AJ all freaked out and he didn't want to help me look for the cache. Here is a view from the cache site for one of them on the left.

On the right we have the North Fork of the American River.

I actually moved the Jeep named after this river and had looked it up on Google Earth during that time, never dreaming I would see it in real life. Just gorgeous. We drove south along a windy Hwy 49 though "Gold Rush" country. We learned all kinds of history along the way and felt like we had gone back a hundred years. We stopped at caches that were small hikes up in the sierras and park and grabs along the highway.

The caches in this area I would highly recommend:
Bessie's Booty:

A multi-cache is one whose coordinates lead to to a starting point, from which you must decipher one or more further points until finding the cache. At the coordinates for this one, we found a treasure map with clues to the final destination, where Bessie hid her booty before walking the plank. You had to count out paces to the cache and AJ and I had a lot of fun with that. It was a true pirate cache filled to the brim with booty. We traded our coins for their coins.

An Earthcache is one that leads you to an area where you have to answer questions or perform a task related to the geography of the area. We continued to cache our way to Amador City, where we ate our lunch and answered a virtual. If you dine in Amador City, bring cash with you, because they don't take cards and you will have to drive to Sutter Creek, two miles away, for the closest ATM to get your cache. The food can be pricey, too. At the diner we stopped at, a hot dog plate, cheeseburger plate, a root beer float, and an iced tea ran us $16. On the way to Sutter Creek, we stopped at a goldmine, also an earthcache called Gold! Gold! Gold! At Sutter Creek!

This was our first earthcache. We had to take a picture with a sign and answer a question about gold. I told AJ we were not going to do the mine tour but he could pick from panning for gold flakes, gems, or pick out a geode to have cracked open. He chose the geode, which turned out a soft pretty white inside.
After this, we headed towards Highway 88. I accidentally went the wrong way on 88 at first and we grabbed a couple caches that way before I realized my error, and so we turned around and began grabbing caches again. When we got past Lodi, we took 12 heading west towards Fairfield, then cut to I-80 heading back to San Francisco. There was a lot of dead time along this drive and we entered the much-dreaded DNF (Did-Not-Find) zone along the way. Luckily that zone did not last long, but it led straight into Don't-Wanna-Cache-No-More zone.

Our favorite cache was one off 12 called Wind Farms. We had never seen wind turbines up close. We decided they must be doing a pretty good job growing wind on that farm because it sure was gusty out here.

I was considering stopping in Fairfield overnight when I first planned this trip (well, once I realized the road I wanted to take originally, the Mormon Emmigrant Trail, was still closed), but we had wanted to see more of San Francisco and it was only 5:30 pm, so we kept driving. I needed more cash for parking, so I was looking for a hotel with high speed internet near a Bank of America, and I found just the place in San Pablo. We were eleven miles away from downtown San Fran, just over the Bay Bridge. We checked in and relaxed for a while, bathed the road and caching grime off of us, logged some finds, and then headed out to cache and dine in the City.
We got a couple more cache finds this evening, including a couple virtuals and one of the best traditional caches of the trip, Poet's Peak. This cache, which celebrates a famous poet of San Francisco, treats one to a beautiful view of the city from on top of a hill. We had parked uphill, so getting to the cache was fairly easy, but getting back up to our parking nearly wiped me out. The cache was great, very well-camoed. It is right there in front of everyone's face but no one would never notice it. We had to use the clue to find it.

We were very hungry, so we headed down to the Fisherman's Wharf area to dine. Amy had said she would give us a recommendation, to avoid the tourist trap places, and she texted me a couple, but we fell for the glittery lights anyway. The food was terrible, but I really enjoyed the experience, both in the restaurant and out. We walked around the Wharf area and bought some souvenirs from a shop before heading back to San Pablo.

In the morning, we woke up in time to check out the city some more before catching our flight. We did a virtual or two and headed for the great tourist destination in San Francisco - the Golden Gate Bridge. We walked along the ped walk on the Bridge and took photos in the fog.

Overall, I think we had a great trip. We managed to grab a grand total of 64 geocaches, including two with icons we didn't already have. No one got hurt. We didn't lose any of our portable electronics. We learned a lot about history and geography in this part of the world. We each got the offical t-shirt and geocoin. We came home with a stash of sig items, nano caches, pathtags, pictures, info cards, travel bugs, and memories to last a lifetime. You just couldn't ask for anything more.