journeying

Being well is really great. It means that your husband stops with the water intake interrogations. That you are once again allowed to clean your house. That you can hug your nieces and nephews. And oh yeah, that you can go geocaching.

It's alright, until my brother explained it to me, I didn't know what it meant either.

Basically, geocaching is a world-wide treasure hunt using a GPS device of some sort to find the hidden cache left by someone who wandered the path before you. Once you find it, you decide whether or not to take it and if you do, you replace it with a treasure that you leave for the next journeyer. And yeah, it's awesome.

So armed with my brother Jason's Geocache Iphone app, we went off in search of treasures today. We were a fierce band of travelers composed of me, my sister Jenna, my brother Jase, my mom, and these two young ruffians.
Our first hunt led us to a bamboo forrest.

Where we walked around for a good 20 minutes.

And found nada.

Except for some prickers.

And a desire to say What gives?!?!
So treasureless, we left the bamboo behind and went to a new site.
And found things that we hoped to God were not the treasure.

Things that were far too creepy.
Or far too ridiculously obvious and suburban.
But finally, eureka! Jenna found it in a moment of glorious triumph, causing our spirits to rally.
We decided to take the light stick.
And left an old watch in a magical egg in its stead.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't exactly proven to be magical, per se, but hey, it was really really shiny, which totally counts for something.

And after we took roll call in the small golden book, leaving our legacy in the network of geocahing,
we noticed that our fearless canines were completely tuckered out.
After some prodding and cajoling, Strider finally stood up to walk back down the hill, but Arwen, at only 11 weeks, could still use some coddling.

So I scooped her up and walked her over the hardest part of the terrain.
And she didn't mind it in the least.

Finally it was time for all of us to walk again.
And so we walked out of the forrest, light stick in hand, quest for adventure sated.

For the moment, anyway.

The glorious day ended in a beautiful smash of wind and rain, thunder and lightening that swept away the hot air and left a rainbow draped across the sky.

And a Strider draped across my lap. Not to mention the me draped across my mom's lap.
And one final glimpse of Arwen says it better than I could ever say:
Cause after today, we are all spent.

But in a very very good way.