Geocaching in Missouri

Usually on Monday I post my garage sale finds, but we didn't hit one single sale in the past week.  But I have a really good reason for that.  It was our 29th wedding anniversary yesterday so we went to the lake for a few days and when my husband asked me what I wanted to do for our anniversary, I had only one answer - go geocaching.... in Missouri.

The lake house is less than an hour's drive from the Missouri border and we didn't have any caches in Missouri yet.  So we got up and hit the road by 6 am.  My plan was to find geocaches in 3 states - Kentucky, Missouri, and Illinois, and be back at the lake house in time for the noon football game.  Not a bad plan, right?  I had a list of 15 geocaches..... 2 in Kentucky, 10 in Missouri and 3 in southwestern Illinois.  The ones in Kentucky were quick and easy.  One was a new cache at the entrance to Wickliffe Mounds, where we've been before....

Then we had to cross the Ohio River and the Mississippi River.  Let me tell you something - they have extremely narrow bridges here.  My goodness, they were the most narrow bridges I think we've ever seen....

Our first Missouri cache was one placed in honor of the Scouts, which I loved and thought was appropriate since I grew up as a Girl Scout....

 

 



The next cache was next to a little goldfish pond and I liked this small plague because it was from Chicago.

This cache was a travel bug hotel and I picked up a TB to move along.  I thought the horses were cute and this was outside of a huge fireworks store.  Hence the very appropriate name Boomland.

Check out those gas prices!!!   We haven't seen prices as low as $ 2.99 a gallon in Chicago for years.  We filled up our tank while we were here and took advantage of it.  Thanks Missouri!

This next geocache was the best of the day and I gave it a favorite point.  It was in someone's front yard and it's called The Enchanted TB Village....

How cute is this??

It was just charming and I liked it so much because of all the creative work that went into it.  It's a must do cache if you're ever in the area....

Can you spot the geocache here?

The next cache was hidden in front of a restaurant called Lambert's Café.    Have you ever heard of it?   They weren't open while we were there because it was too early in the day, but I've already told my mom to plan on doing a road trip the next time they are visiting us at the lake so we can go back and eat here.  They throw dinner rolls are you - how fun is that?  Plus their menu sounds fabulous!

The geocache was hidden out in front.  The whole place was cute and I can't wait to go back.

While we were driving around from cache to cache we kept looking for a nice little country café to stop and have an anniversary breakfast.  Sadly, southeastern Missouri is not a hot spot for little cafe's.  We finally ended up stopping at McDonald's and grabbing a McBiscuit to eat in the car.  Talk about a romantic anniversary breakfast!  I am so low maintenance, aren't I?

We ended up finding 9 of the Missouri caches and had to take a DNF on one, so we headed back towards the border, figuring we'd slip into Illinois and grab the 3 earth caches that are located at Ft. Defiance.  But first we had to cross one of those narrow bridges and check out the car towing the trailer in front of us....

 Narrow, narrow bridges....

We pulled into Ft. Defiance and were greeted by locked gates and this sign....  Closed for Clean-up.  Who cleans a fort???? Ugh.....  All thoughts of finding geocaches in 3 states just flew out the window.

Plus I felt bad because I'm a huge fan of the history of Lewis and Clark and they visited this area and I wanted to see it....

 

So we ended up getting 11 geocaches in 2 states and we were still home in time for the noon kick-off.  In between games we made chicken fajita's and cleaned up my pontoon boat and put it away for the winter.  Last up for the day was a huge piece of anniversary cheesecake.  Sorry, no pictures of that - I was too busy eating it.  For me, it was the perfect way to spend our anniversary.  It's the little things that matter.  I don't really care if we're eating Egg McMuffins or dining at a 5 star restaurant, as long as Louie and I are doing it together and laughing at something, then I'm happy.

Note to Mom and Dad - we have a road trip already planned for next time you're here and we will be doing caches in 3 states that day and eating at a cool restaurant.  And that's a fact!!