New Friends, Swamps, & Geocaching

Today we got up and Brock and I took some time to figure out our next steps and made the decision to head East for a bit before we head West. We're heading to Savannah and then Charleston and up through northern Georgia before we head back south and hit the panhandle of Florida. There's too much history to miss seeing and we're not sure we'll come back this far south when we make our way East again in the spring. So, it feels great to have a plan and we have reservations made that will take us up through the third week in January.

After we had our breakfast here and got cleaned up, we got to go to the Williams' house. Ryan is Brock's HTG group member that has an IT business here in Valdosta and he and his wife, Robyn, invited us over for lunch. We decided to do a little exploring before we ate and they took us out to Grand Bay Nature Center so we could view the swamp and look for alligators. Our kids had a great time getting to know their boys, Nate and Owen, who are the same ages as Spence and Sky.

The swamp was really different from anything we've seen before. It was definitely not a place that I'd like to be at night! The moss is really cool and moves in an eerie way in the wind. Today's high was just under 60 degrees and we didn't see any alligators. We're not sure what alligators do when the weather is cold. We did learn last week at the Homosassa park from a ranger that alligators are dormant in the winter, meaning they don't eat when the temperature is below about 70 degrees. The alligators we saw at that park were very stationary just soaking up some sun. Not sure what they do when there isn't much sun.

When we got out to the end of the boardwalk there was a tower you can climb to the top of to have a 360 degree view of the area. It was chilly and windy up there, but it was a cool vista. Brock and Ryan were discussing geocaching. Their family has a little experience and we decided to give it a try. We downloaded an app on Brock's phone which has a database of locations. Turned out there was one at the very near where we were standing on the boardwalk. We used our phones gps and compass capabilities and clues that were in the app and it led us back to the tower where we scoured the beams and Brock finally found the little capsule in a tiny triangle between steel girders. So fun! You open it up and sign a paper (if you bring a pen, which we didn't) telling the date and where you're from and your name. There is a little sense of being a treasure hunter that is pretty addicting. There was supposed to be another cache somewhere near the education center at the start of the boardwalk, but we weren't able to put the clues together and located that one and after all of us spent a good 20 minutes looking, we eventually admitted defeat and moved on. There was another cache that the Williams family had found before at the park entrance and so they stopped and showed us that one and we had a pen and the McFarlane kids were able to record their names for posterity. Everyone enjoyed it and I think it may be something that we can do just about anywhere along our trip. The database showed, I think, over 2 million caches hidden worldwide.

Our first geocache find.

The first official record of our geocaching. :o)

All the kids enjoyed playing with this race track for hours.

When we left there, we went back to the Williams' home and had an amazing, delicious spread of build-your-own sub sandwiches, chips, potato salad, and sweet tea or soda. Everyone ate really well. The kids played together all the rest of the afternoon and evening. It was fun to hear them laugh and dance around together. Brock and I really enjoyed the adult interaction as well. There was even yummy chocolate cake and Keurig coffee for dessert. That was my first taste of Keurig and I had the hazelnut flavor with hazelnut creamer added and it was GOOD.


We are truly grateful for the generous hospitality of the Williams' family and for the chance to see some new faces besides our own. ;o)