Dallas Date Night #1 - Geocaching

One of our New Year's resolutions was to actually have a weekly date night. Oh, we've "said" that we have a date night each week ever since we got married - but sitting on the couch, watching tv, folding laudry, and eating leftovers doesn't count any more.

So, we decided that in order to make it through seminary and still want to be married to each other, we should spend some quality time just hanging out.

My friend Jenna, whom you should know very well by now, and I planned a fun double date to start off the year (yes, this occurred at the beginning of January and yes, Jenna blogged about it two days after it happened, but it's okay, better late than never).

Our husbands had NO IDEA they were going GEOCACHING until we got ready to hop in the car.

If you are not familiar with geocaching, then let me explain. You simply go to www.geocaching.com, find some geocaches that you want to hunt, plug the coordinates into your GPS unit, and search away for little match boxes and key boxes. It's a treasure hunt for adults.

To make matters more interesting, mainly for us girls in the back seat, I found geocaches all over east Dallas that were "haunted." Each stop had a crazy little story about how someone drove off a bridge or disappeared forever at that location. We even unintentionally ended the night searching for our last cache in a cemetery at dusk! It was quite the spine-tingling thrill.

The boys sat in front and navigated with their GPS units.
The first cache we hunted down was near Snuffer's Restaurant on Greenville, Ave. The GPS units are only accurate to within 10-25 feet or so, and I was determined NOT to go in the restaurant after a little cache box, so we scoured the outside.
Jenna finally found the FIRST one behind the stinky dumpster! For each cache you are suppose to sign your "team name" and the date you found the cache. After Jenna found the first cache, we all stared at each other, "What's our team name?" We quickly decided that when Joey or Jenna found the cache we'd record our team as "The Woesters" (that's Woestman and Stillers mashed together - get it?), and when Danny or I found a cache we'd put down "The Stillmans." We were very impressed with our creativity.
Danny found the next one, a camoflauged sour cream container. He was so determined to be able to put the Stillman's down on the cache record that he flew out of the car almost before it stopped - and he was driving. Joey, Jenna, and I sat in the car, looked at each other in sheer astonishment at how fast he had excited the vehicle, and then threw open our doors and chased after him.

Some of the caches contain little goodies on the rule of them that you can take a prize if you leave something in it's place. We didn't bring any little trinkets with us, so we just admired all the goodies we found and left them for the next geocachers.
At one point we were digging ferociously through some bushes looking for the cache, when I looked up and saw Jenna completely buried. She's the queen of fitting in small, random places.
And, sometimes, just sometimes, Danny and I have very short attention spans. That is why I carry a camera. You can never be bored with a camera. And that is also why I married Danny Stiller, because he LOVES to pose for the camera. So, just when we were tired of looking getting scratched and scrapped by shrubbery while looking for a match box, Danny would yell, "Hey, get a picture of me doing this:"
Or this!
And finally, here our boys, who turned out to be GPS Geniuses!
More Free (or very cheap) Dallas Date Nights to come . . . stay tuned.

(Actual Date Day: 1/4/08)