A short trip out, er, um, April Fools!

As always, spoiler alert!

Looking back to April 1...
After a marvelous time with family, Lexi asked those who could to join us for a little geocaching so she could share her love and skill for it with them.  Unfortunately, most everyone had pressing plans, with the exception of her "Uncle Joshy."  He had expressed interest earlier in the day, so after a little clean up at the party, we headed out to see if we could show Josh how to cache.  We figured we would catch a few smileys and he would want to head home before it got too late in the evening.  After all, we didn't set out until after 3:00 in the afternoon...

#58, finally!

Conveniently, there was a cache hidden right outside our picnic location.  We had made an attempt on it before, without luck.  In fact, we had met a nice man and his two delightful daughters one evening while they were making an attempt on the same cache.  They were newer to caching than we were, and very excited.  We exchanged information and we shared with them our blog so they could follow along our journeys.  I am excited to say they have started a blog of their own,  Adventures in Geocaching, which you will see in Our Favorite Blogs to Visit list to the right of this post as well.  I encourage anyone who is excited about caching to follow them too.  They actually found the hide outside the brewery before we did - Go Cache Kids!  On this day, we made the find with a brand new cacher in tow.

One sweet haul and one heck of a good time! A lesson in life and the evolution of Ball jars (in part)

Saturday, I got a quick text from my dear friend saying, "Five boxes of used canning jars at an auction - 25 jars, many blue, per box - $5 each.  SCORE!!" This was followed by "Come see them!" How could I resist?

I went right over and while she washed, I did a preliminary sort. When I went home for the evening, I printed out some of the resources I have found on the history of the Ball brand and their logo, to take back with me on Sunday. Armed with information, we set about identifying what treasures were in her haul, and to determine an actual count. My preliminary sort from the day before was helpful here, as I had grouped by color and similar logos to try to separate time frames of production. When we were confident we had them all ordered chronologically, we began cataloging the inventory and photographing each style for reference. There was a marvelous mix of blue and clear Ball, aqua and clear Atlas, lavender and clear Kerr, as well as several other interesting fruit jars and miscellaneous jars produced by Ball and Atlas for commercial purposes (these originally came with food in them from the grocery store - pasta sauce, commercially canned fruit. etc.). The commercial jars were labeled with the actual product label, so the jar manufacturer was molded quietly into the bottoms of these jars.

Chronological lineup

I spent the entire day (from noon-ish to 7pm or so) with Vicki, organizing, cataloging, and all-around appreciating these beautiful and historic gems. We learned together about some of the history of the company, associated patents and government regulations, all of which shaped the history of this line of fruit/canning jars. We lined them up for a "family" photo and Vicki took a video of the progression.

Aside from the learning and productivity we experienced all afternoon, the greatest gift was not that she sent me home with some beautiful jars to add to my collection (although it was extremely generous and is unbelievably appreciated), but the amazing gift of friendship. We got to know each other better and had what we decided was a proper, soul-feeding Sunday afternoon. As humans, we all need a day now and then that recharges our being and revitalizes our spirit. This was the sort of day we had. We bonded, shared, laughed and let go of the stresses of the workweek together. It was, I believe, the greatest gift that can be shared between friends. I made sure to tell her how  much it meant to me and how blessed I am to call such a lovely person my friend. Everyone should be so lucky!

Enough with the mushy stuff. Let me cover some of the history we pieced together. Please keep in mind, this is the assembled history of only those jars she acquired in the lot. It is in NO WAY a complete reference, nor am I an expert in any way. All dates are approximate, as there was often overlap and ambiguity as to when the molds were removed from production and new ones were introduced. I will list the major resources from which I gleaned my information and I highly recommend anyone interested go check out the information for themselves. That said, here is what we learned:

Happy 6th Birthday little monkey!

Miss Alexis turned 6 on March 27, which was a Tuesday.  We couldn't do much that evening since we get home so late and it was a school night.  We asked her where she wanted to have dinner, if she could choose anywhere; she chose Mario's, our family favorite Mexican place.  Of course, we treated her to ice cream after at the Spotted Cow.  It was a great evening as a family, but not much in the way of celebration and bedtime comes so fast on work nights!

With the weather being as nice as it has been, we decided a picnic would be great.  She could play on a big playground structure, we could eat and visit and celebrate her six solid years as a great kid.  There would be cake too!  Along came Sunday, and with it did NOT come warm, sunny weather.  In fact it was damp and quite cool...not very conducive to picnicking.  The only back up location we could think of that was kid friendly that would allow us to bring the picnic indoors (food and all) was OG.

A shot at redemption

With a bit of time to kill on a Saturday, what do you suppose we turned to?  I will tell you - redeeming ourselves.  We have been unable to find one cache in particular on more than one occasion so we decided to make a quick trip out and try to find it again. This cache is a micro (small but not tiny) that is supposedly hidden in plain sight, but cleverly so.  After a great deal of searching, confusion and walking in circles,we came up empty handed once again.  We will have to take another shot at redeeming ourselves another day, I guess. We didn't want to simply go home with tails tucked in failure, so we decided to attempt another to end on a high note.

More after work fun

As always, this post may contain spoilers!

#51, first in a parking structure

Hitting a milestone like #50 didn't slow us down.  On the contrary, we were even more excited to get back out there.  On lunch, I decided to check the area around the office for caches, and, what do you know!? There was one located in the parking structure adjacent to our office building. I told Shane about it and we decided to make a quick trip over to locate it before it was time to get back into our day of meetings.  We had never located one in a parking structure before, so we weren't sure of the hide technique.  Being multilevel, we found ourselves searching several floors once we pinned down which side it was on (thanks to the satellite imagery on the app for our phones).  Shane made the find without too much trouble and we were logging another smiley.  There was a trackable inside this particular hide, but it had a huge laminated photo hitchhiker that would have been difficult to place in another cache, so we passed on it.  It was neat to score a find on lunch and leads me to think that we may have to plan a little picnic lunch caching later in the season.

Preserving the wild - Wild Violet Jelly

Just a weed, but so tasty!

I simply can't believe I didn't write about this last year the first time I made it.  If I did, I sure can't find the post now.  Wild Violet jelly is such a unique and short seasoned treat.  I read about it last spring and decided I had to try it. I just went out and picked the required two cups Saturday morning for a new batch this year.  I hope to make several.  

Since I have had some interest in folks purchasing some of my canned and homemade goods, I am trying to think outside the box and include in my canning some less-than-common items that may appeal to those looking for something different for themselves, or for a gift.  If nothing else, this is a cute novelty item.  It doesn't have to be though, it's actually quite tasty.

A nice round number, like 50!

After being so close to our 50th find, we couldn't wait to go out and hit our first milestone! March 18, we headed out with just that goal in mind.  We didn't have a lot of time, so we got right to it to get the two finds we needed.  We found yet another local park we never knew existed, and wandered in to check things out.  There were some teenagers that acted very suspiciously when we arrived who made haste in departing at the same time.  Maybe I am getting old, but A LOT more people behave suspiciously to me than what I used to see. However, in my defense, it is also in the news a lot more than in the past as well. :-)

#49 just waiting for Shane!

With all the rain we have had this season, the trails were pretty muddy and soft.  When we realized how far off the path the cache was hidden, Shane decided to grab it himself while we waited on higher ground.  It was tucked under a log and just waiting for him.

This one was one we had saved for some time, as it had the requirement of swapping out ONLY dinosaur prizes.  We had to wait until we found one in another cache to move to this one before we could hunt it.  Today was the day!