County by County; State by State

Three more days until the influx of cute little kids.  I'm excited!  My caseload this year is slightly higher, but I'm happy with it--really happy.  I have a terrific speech pathologist to work with, an enthusiastic principal, and staff members at Ephesus who walk all kinds of lives.  It's like coming back home to family after a long vacation.
   Even though, I do love my job, since the kids aren't there, the picture below is what my life is like right now.

I have nothing more to say about work---it's hard to blog in an interesting way about faculty meetings.

So I'll talk here a minute about geocaching.  The world is big, and chances are, I won't get to every country in my lifetime.  There's a lot of them, and some don't welcome visitors, while others are very tiny.  Some are very far away and don't have many airports.  Some are expensive.  It's also time-consuming, and I do teach.  I don't know if my principal would approve a month-long vacation for me to take an African road trip just so I could geocache all of the countries of the sub-saharan area (do they have roads there for an actual road trip?)

  Since the world conquest seems a bit much right now, David and I have concentrated our geocaching efforts on finding caches in every county in North Carolina and in the states in the U.S.   David (being the tech guru) has actually charted the counties.  I'm lacking about 5 of them (the white counties below). We have had a great time touring most of NC, and have seen lovely waterfalls, sand dunes, bird walks, cotton fields, interesting urban settings, and decaying small towns, all throughout the state. 

I'm lacking 5 counties (out of 100)

The states of the United States have proven to be a bigger challenge.  We have vacationed in Oregon, Arizona, the Southeast, and the Northeast, but have many states in the midsection to go.  The Grand Canyon, the coast of Maine, Mt. St. Helen, and Lake Erie have all been visited, but less exciting states like Kansas elude us for the moment.  I'm sure Kansas is actually very interesting, but sites like the rocky coast of Oregon seemed a bit of a higher priority!  I realize that this seems as though geocaching has taken over, but the reality is that it gives David and me an excuse to see a close-up view of the country.  America is a great place with many, very interesting sites.  The world is next---I've been to a few countries (pre-geocaching) and want to see more.  I'll keep you posted!

States we've geocached in