Took Long Enough!

The girls headed back home to Longview over the weekend, but I managed to get one more day of caching with a minor difference. I took Friday off to drive around wherever we might end up. My younger daughter decided to stay behind on Friday to hang out with their cousin. That means the older daughter and I set off to grab counties alone. She wanted to get back at a reasonable time to hang out with their cousin a bit herself, so we didn’t go from sunup to sundown, but we managed to make five counties.

We set off at 8:00 a.m. for Bexar County. Once inside the county from I-35, we headed west toward the close junction of several counties to find a Mystery Cache I had solved the night before. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find it, so we went with a gnome-themed Letterbox and a Traditional right down the road from our morning DNF. A few minutes later, we cut the corner of Medina County for another Mystery solved the night before (one which we found this time) and a little 3D printed acorn in a tree. I marveled at how much easier the county was when I didn’t have to go to the center of it. A few more miles later, we were in Bandera County, grabbing a couple more. A 3D printed maze, a favorite container type of mine, at ground zero for the Mystery earned one of my stingily hoarded favorite points. Once we grabbed a random Traditional on the road, we stopped in Boerne proper for smoothies and a couple of caches, the Letterbox being the smallest one I had ever seen. Finally, we continued on to Kerrville, stopping at a rest stop for her first EarthCache (she didn’t want to do science during summer vacation but, as always, had salient thoughts and observations) and then at a cemetery in town for one last cache. I tried to gently egg her on to continue to Junction or Llano, but she wanted to stick to the plan, so stick to it we did. We began the trip back home, passing through Fredericksburg, where we stopped for a late lunch and the opportunity to finally fulfill a promise four years in the making.

During the pandemic, the girls and I took a drive out to Gillespie County, and they wanted to get peaches while we were there. Unfortunately, all the businesses that claimed to sell them were closed because of the pandemic. We don’t go there all that often, but we’d been back a few times over those years, and either the orchards were closed because of the hour, or peaches just weren’t in season at the time. But this time was different; we were in Fredericksburg, it was the right time of year, and stuff was open. So, after all these years, we got peaches! The covenant was fulfilled!