I LOVE Weekends

I just wish they were so much longer. Today is a hard Monday.. with my parents being here last week it feels as if I had an extra long weekend. Had such a wonderful time visiting with them last week and I am excited that they will be back the end of September :) Thursday night we went to dinner with them at Gerry Andal's, which happens to be one of my favorite restaurants and then my oldest son came over for a drink with us all after his shift at work, it just amazes me that I have a son old enough to sit in a restaurant and order a beer... I do not feel old enough for this. Then again my next youngest is married and in the marines..in less than a year my "baby" will be 18 and done with high school. Time really happens in the blink of an eye.

Patrick is 21

After we left the restaurant we decided we were not ready to go home so we headed to the casino for a bit... played a few dollars in the slots and then just sat in the bar for a bit and listened to some music did some people watching and had a couple of drinks. It was a nice night.. just relaxing and enjoying our time together.
English Boom

This weekend we spent time caching and hiking and playing in the woods and on the beach. We sat in restaurants and visited. We drove around shopping and talking and even went and visited some friends from years ago. It was a great weekend filled with time together. We did some hiking on Saturday on some trails near Stanwood, there are a bunch of trails in these woods and the trail we picked had four caches on it. After the last cache and a mile into the woods... I sort of decided I knew the way back to the jeep... which I did.. but the trail I picked ended up being not a really good one.. as in... it turned out to be an animal trail that did not go very far and we had to bushwhack for some of it...right through the berry bushes... which was not so horrible... the laughing while trying to avoid stickers was a bit harder.
Hidden Cache... or not so hidden :)

Sunday we ended up a bit closer to home even... we went after a couple of caches on the English Boom here on the island, this place is amazing and so beautiful. There is a nice trail to start out on... and then you come to a big ditch... well the tide was coming in and we knew from reading about them that we might not be able to get to these... yet looking around we were not sure low tide would help much. We decided to take a jump over the ditch... well there was a big stump in it so it worked out well, we stepped on to it and walked across then jumped over to the other side and carried on our way. The first cache was not so hard at all.. only so many places to hide it.. and then... even though we knew the next one would be impossible.. we had to go and check out the area... and yes it is impossible (without getting soaking wet) at high tide.. but low tide it should be easy enough.

There is a cache on that boat... but need low tide and boots to get it!

Heading back was a bit of an adventure.. well only in one spot.. the ditch... see the tide had been coming in the whole time we were out walking.. so by the time we got back to the ditch.. there was less of the stump... now I know in photos it does not look like much.. but... for me.. it was scary... the water was moving around this stump and it was yucky brown color and the stump was sort of floating a bit more now.. and I had to do some big jumping to get across.. basically I aimed to where I wanted to go.. told Dave he better catch me.. and closed my eyes and jumped.. with lots of praying (that sort of sounded like cussing out) I did it and it was not nearly as bas once I was done... this geo caching is bringing out the adventure side of me.. sort of... lol I tend to be so focused on getting to the cache that I get some tunnel vision and then when it is time to head back I have some different views on things.

This is the stump... lol not so scary looking now!