September 2011
After the recent heat wave affecting New England we (me and the kids) have decided to postpone our summer road trip until September. Its a good excuse to blow off a little school but more importantly the weather will be more temperate and I won’t have to deal with 110 degrees while strolling through Hays, KS or Terre Haute, IN. We stayed there last year in our travels and both were little slices of hell on earth. Neither my kiddos nor their Mom do very well in such high heat.
We’ll be driving out to Colorado and hopefully staying at the Garden of the Gods Campground (they don’t close until September 30th) for about a week and hanging out with incredible friends (they can only be found in one place apparently lol). We were considering staying a while but the Colorado Springs School for the Blind isn’t sure if they’ll be able to provide programming for Rachel.
We’ve generally traveled route 70 and took route 80 home once but we are open to suggestions. Any good road stop ideas? I really want to go to Niagra Falls this time around…. but I hate the drive through upstate New York.
Planning to go to the Flying W for dinner, Santas Workshop for some fun, Geocaching, then float down the Arkansas River and we (me) are looking to do some stock friendly trails with the Jeep while we are out there. Every summer seems to be a little more difficult than the last so we have no choice but to take life by the horns……………..
Read MoreGeocaching
Oh my goodness, I am hooked! If you don’t know what geocaching is, there is this great website www.geocaching.com
What is geocaching: Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location.
Yesterday I took John and the kids on an adventure. We finally have the third row seat in my jeep so we were able to go – all 6 of us together. First time since January. We went to 5 sites and found 4 of the caches. We traveled to beaches and woods and parks that we have never been to before. It was beautiful, the warm sun felt so good on our skin and it was great to get everyone some exercise.
Of the 4 caches we found, John found 3 of them. I was mostly on Rachel duty and ended up about 50 yards behind the rest of them but we didn’t give up. Cache #4 was found by Rachel at a very old cemetery in Cohasset, Massachusetts. We were on the site for about 15 minutes and just couldn’t find it (about to leave) and Rachel was hanging on to this old iron gate and feeling all around it and what did she find???! Yes!!! It was this micro cache (about the size of a fat watch battery) that unscrewed with a very teeny tiny paper scroll inside. It was magnetized and was “stuck” to this gate. Couldn’t have been a more perfect find. Leave it up to my beautiful blind daughter to find what all of us sighted folk couldn’t see. I am so proud of her, was a great boost to her self esteem.
I think I might steal the kids away from their summertime boredom to do more treasure hunting today because I am hooked. HOOKED! We are also going to make a few of our own caches and hide them nearby for others to find.
TeamRachel aka mrskatvon is both a website to gain public awareness of Juvenile Batten Disease (which affects my oldest daughter) as well as a journal to remember the events in our lives.
Rachel was diagnosed with Batten Disease in July 2009 and while we knew something was "not right" we had no idea that such a nightmarish disease existed. There are dozens of nasty, orphan disease which affect people both very young and old.
Aside from dealing with the changes of Batten Disease in my daughter, Rachel, I have tasked myself with making life memorable for all of my children to make sure that (at least) 3 of them grow up to be as well adjusted and happy as possible.
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