Travels with Howie

January 29, 2013      6  pm cst     74 degrees

  I am not sure I would want to try to take that shopping cart away from this grackle.....he looks kind of possessive.  I wonder if Alfred Hitchcock was in Harlingen when he got the idea for the movie The Birds.

Ever heard of geocaching?

 

 It is a modern day, high tech version of the treasure hunt.  A while back when Neil was at the Iwo Jima museum where he volunteers, he noticed a bunch of young people climbing all over this tank.  Turns out they were geocachng.  They go to the page on the internet, get the GPS co ordinates for a "treasure" in their vicinity and then go out with their GPS  or compass to find the well hidden  item.  The find is nothing valuable, just a notebook to show you were there and a few odd trinkets just for fun to add to or swap.

We thought we would try it  with the cache that we already knew about just to photograph the process.  So the co ordinates got us to this area and after looking the lo

cation all over, he thinks he sees something hidden behind the track.

 

.After some struggling, he gets this ammo box out.

 

And this is what is inside.... a few beads, some little gummy erasers, a baby doll, a tiny soccer ball and a  ponytail holder.

We signed the book, put a little trinket in  and replaced the box for someone else to find.

The little notebook that you can just barely see was filled with names of previous finders and a new notebook was added, so the cache has been there for a while.

There is another cache at the Freddy Fender memorial but we fear that it was removed when they put up new fencing.

This geocaching has been around for years, and has caches around the world.  

 

Maybe that would have been nice when our children were young and hated to go on our "Boring Sunday rides."

This is the entrance to Dr, Keillor's office...he calls himself, "Keillor the Healer."

I love how it opens onto a courtyard with plantings and seating.  There are three offices that open onto it.

As I am going in, the walker echos in the hallway, ka-lomp, ka-lomp ka-lomp.  Neil says "I don't like the sound of that.  It sounds like someting in a scary movie is creeping up on you like  in  the movie Jaws."

 

 

 

Dr gives me some more miserable exercises and as he is writing his chart, he looks up and asks me if I am German or Swedish".

I told him I was mostly  English and Irish.

Hm, he says, you got big bones.   Big bones.

 There is no Osteoporous or bone cancer, or anything, the bones are good and solid,  but you just have BIG bones.

 

 

Do you know how, in the movies, the slightly overweight girl says  she isnt chubby,  she just has big bones?    Well, I now have proof that I am not overweight, I just have big bones.

 

He has a cell phone? 

 

p.s.   Many thanks for the cards and flowers.  These lillies are the last survivors but just look at how pretty.  Those blooms are about 9-10 inches across.