This morning, I left my sister’s house and headed back to “historic” Grapevine (the little downtown tourist district) not far from the campground. I was on a mission to find another stuffed armadillo for my friend, Anne’s, other son. While I was there, I also planned on finding a few geocaches. The souvenir shop was closed, so I went caching first. Of the six caches I hunted, I only found three. Yet another mediocre day! I need my Baltimore caching buddies back. Glenn and Jordan are my good luck charms, my younger eyes and ears. I find so many more caches when they come along. Alas, I’m on my own here in Texas!
The guy on the left is concealing a cache near or on him. I couldn't find it.
There’s a cacher in Grapevine who has hidden several caches in the area. I hate him. HATE him! He rates all his caches at a 1.5 difficulty, meaning I should be in and out of there in maybe half an hour, fifteen minutes, even. But no. He’s a big, fat liar! His caches shoud probably be rated a 2.5 or 3 at least. Take, for example, the cache he hid near a railroad museum, full of old railcars and rusting metal machinery. The cache container was magnetic. Magnetic, understand, in a field full of metal with lots of rust and sharp edges. Really? I can’t remember the last time I had my tetanus shot! If it hadn’t been nearly 100 degrees already at 9 a.m., I might have had more patience with this jerk who likes to fool people into trying “easy” caches that are anything but. I gave up on two of his caches that morning. I did manage to find three other caches, however, before I had to head over to the campground and check in on the kitty and the RV.
Our A/C has frozen over, I think, so very little, if any, cool air is being pushed out. I turned it off for a little while and let it rest, but it needed to be off for hours. I had to leave, though, so I couldn’t let the kitty stay in the rig with NO air conditioning at all! It’s one thing for the RV to be 88-90 degrees, it’s another for it to be 100. I turned the thermostat up so that the A/C might kick of on its own and have a chance to defrost. If it’s still frozen over tomorrow, it shouldn’t be a problem because we’ll be on the road all day long, so the A/C will be off all that time and should right itself. I hope. I really, really hope. Of all things to break, the A/C is the one I most dread. I left kitty with lots of water, the fan on, and plenty of food, took out the trash, and washed up the dishes in the sink.
Before heading back to meet my sister at her house, I stopped off and grabbed some olive oil and Italian bread for us to share. I went back to her place and made some spaghetti for lunch, and we dipped the bread in the oil. It wasn’t the best meal I’d ever cooked by any stretch of the imagination. The pasta was overcooked, the sauce was bottled, and the bread was denser than I liked. Oh, well. That’s what happens when I rush things. It was edible, so we all got it down and it filled us up.
View from the grassy knoll looking across Dealey Plaza
My sister and I left and went to downtown Dallas for the afternoon. There we visited Dealey Plaza and the Book Depository, site of the assassination of JFK. I got to stand on the famous “grassy knoll” and look across to the exact spot where Kennedy was shot. There is a museum in the Book Depository, and Lynn bought us tickets. We took the tour and got to look out the window on the sixth floor from which Oswald fired. When we left downtown, we actually drove over the fateful spot on Elm street which is now marked with an “X.” That was the creepiest experience of the day. An effort has been made to preserve Dealey Plaza exactly as it was then. As Americans, we’ve all seen the photos and the video footage so many times that the site is part of our national consciousness. Driving through the area, I realized that everything was familiar to me, even though I’d never actually been there before: the Book Depository, Dealey Plaza, the grassy knoll, the highway underpass…all of it.
When walking back to our car, I realized there was a geocache only a few hundred feet away. I talked my sister into giving it a try. My phone took us to within ten feet of the cache, and Lynn did the rest. She guessed the site right away and came up with the container like she’d been caching her whole life! Score! That cache put me within two of my goal, but now I’m out of time! We leave tomorrow morning, so I won’t have an opportunity to do anymore searching. Maybe I’ll get lucky and we’ll find something near somewhere we stop for fuel or to spend the night.
Lynn and I headed back to her place where we met with Lex and Shay. The four of us went to the nearby German Deli where Lex skipped about gaily like a kid in the proverbial candy store. Candy, in fact, was mostly what she bought. She stocked up on all the foods she’s missed since moving back to the US from Augsburg after her high school graduation some 16 years ago. I don’t think I’ve seen her so happy during the whole trip! It was just so cute to watch her running from rack to rack going, “Oh, look! They have Haribo and Milke and Ritter Sport and, and, and…” She filled up a handbasket with goodies and emptied her wallet. Before she left, she got to stick a little red push pin into a giant map of Germany on the wall that is already covered in pushpins. Any person in the store who has ever lived in, been stationed in, has visited, or feels some other personal connection to Germany can stick a pin in the map and then sign the book.
We had to leave the German Deli because they were closing and because we needed to meet one of Shay’s friends, Donna, at a Mexican restaurant not far away so we could have dinner. Mi Cocina in Southlake is a rather high-end establishment that serves some pretty classed-up Mexican food. I had a mango margarita and Lex had a drink called The Dilemma. It was three flavors of margarita blended into one. We ate a great meal and got to know Donna better. Overfull and a little tipsy, we departed the restaurant and came back home with Lynn and Shay where we’re spending the night.
When we get up in the morning, we’re heading over to the RV, breaking camp, hitching up, and heading back towards Maryland. We’re not sure how far we’re going to go, exactly, but we’ll probably end up somewhere between Little Rock, Arkansas, and Jackson, Tennessee. It just depends on how much driving Lex feels like she can do. Since our plans are so loose and we’ll be stopping after dark, we’re probably going to be boondocking overnight. That means it’s going to be HOT! Urgh. Oh, well. Two or three nights of that and we’ll be back home, plugged in, and the A/C will have gotten plenty of rest. Hopefully it will still work then!
The trip has been amazing. The very idea of getting back to the regular day-to-day is hard for me to get my head around. I’ve got four days to adapt to the notion before reality smacks me upside the head and I have to return to work.
Tags: family, food, Geocaching, Grapevine, history, Texas, Travel
Candy store, What fun!!
We had a German store right here in Harford Ct. but it closed. It was a bakery with other goodies. I think I bought candy there too.