Thursday, September 10th

This was a day of organization and doing very little – wonderful! We had an earlier dinner and went off in search of a geocache. The plan was to find a geocache each week, however, everything has taken a lot longer than I’d thought it would each day so this was the first opportunity we’d had to actually go out and search. We’d found one near the house a couple of months ago when Jake wasn’t with us so he was particularly eager to see what this was all about.

The first stop was the Illinois & Michigan Canal. This was so neat to show the kids, it was right by a lock. We were able to explain how a lock worked and let them see how a canal boat would sit in the lock and rise or lower with the water. This Canal was completed in 1848 and is part of the waterway that begins in NY’s Erie Canal, through Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan to Chicago, then from the canal to the Illinois River at La Salle, then to the Mississippi River and New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico.

Unfortunately the location of the geocache was in the middle of a huge area of poison ivy. We were not dressed for dealing with poison ivy and weren’t that desperate to get to the cache! There was great disappointment from the assembled children so off we went, in search of another one. The next one took us to Oakwood Cemetery, another place we would not have visited had it not been for a specific purpose. We found the 1864 gravestone we were looking for (kids were fascinated by the older gravestones – we encouraged them to be respectful and limit their running!) and Dave braved more poison ivy to reach the hidden old metal box that housed this cache. There was great excitement as Dave opened the box and the treasure was revealed. Typically these things are filled with $ store type trinkets – just the kind of thing Becca loves, her eyes were wide with joy! We ‘admired’ all the plastic toys and each of us signed the log book before Dave returned it to its spot. I’m hoping now that we’ve done one on the trip, we’ll do more – hopefully also find one in the UK when we go at the end of the month.