Shady Grove

This was another of the caches in the cemetery series. This time we barely went any distance before the land was opening up. Again, beautiful rolling hills with lots of trees. Just the kind of land we hope to live on one day. Who knows, perhaps a cache will lead us to our future homestead.

This cemetery had a very different energy than the previous one. It reminded me of being in New Mexico. The grass was in tufts and parched. The dirt was sandy. There were but a few trees. The surrounding fence was like walking into the cattle pens my great grandparents had when I was a child.

This is a mostly abandoned graveyard, taken care of by the abandoned graveyard association in Parker County. It seems one lone soul was buried there in 2001, but otherwise the graves were from the early 1900's.

There was a newly built church beside it with a newly built playground. Noelle played on the slide for a long while. She even went down by herself a couple times, and it wasn't one of those little slides. She seems to be full of laughs and an absence of fear when she goes down. Hmmm...sounds like I have a few skipped heartbeats in the future.

The cache

The tree holding the cache

Baby's First Geocache

Stephen and I are returning to a forgotten but much loved hobby we used to enjoy together in Austin -- geocaching.

Except we are bringing along a new adventurer. A little wanderer. And we are going to keep track of it all on this blog, http://www.littlewanderers.blogspot.com/. There is a link at the side of the page, as well.

For those who don't know, geocaching is like a treasure hunt, except the prizes aren't coin but sweeping views, or hidden away groves, or swathes of land one might never see without the search for a cache. Basically, people hide little containers full of odds and ends. They record the coordinates of this treasure and post them here, http://www.geocache.com/, for people to enter into their own GPS. Then the hunt begins. It is always surprising and exciting to see where a cache brings you. It is the embodiment of immersing oneself in the journey, rather than the goal. And it is just darn fun.

Our first cache is part of a series bringing us to small, sometimes abandoned, cemeteries around Parker County. It wound us through the less affluent parts of Weatherford which eventually opened into rolling hills and large barb-wired patches of land.

This cemetery actually had more new graves than old. But it still had that peace that always seems to guard the resting places of those who have passed on.

The cache was hidden in the wooden post.