The great thing about being a dad to small kids is that you always have a built-in excuse to be in the toy aisle. And if you have your kids with you then nobody looks twice at you as you gawk at all the amazing stuff on the store shelves these days. We are living in a golden age for toys and board games. Sure, there were a lot of really cool toys that I miss from the seventies and eighties that I wish my kids had a chance to experience, but today’s market offers a certain quality and vast variety of toys and other amusements that the old days could never touch.
Garden Ridge recently declared bankruptcy, and are now being reincorporated as At Home. But true to form, the seasons still come early there and stay late.
My dear wife noticed yesterday that one of the nearby stores had been refurbished, so we decided to drop in and check it out. I of course had high hopes for what to expect, and I wasn’t disappointed.
There is a little independent retro gaming store in Plano that is the closest thing to a real arcade that I’ve ever experienced with the kids. There are still a lot of places you could call “arcades”, mostly attached to chain family restaurants like Chuck-E-Cheese or entertainment complexes like Fun Zone or Amazing Jakes. But the key differentiator for me is that the machines take real quarters, preferably only one per play. I always hated changing tokens, and to me the idea of plopping tokens into a machine screws with the mythology somehow.
I like geocaching for lots of reasons. I like to be outside. I like discovering new places. I like walking and connecting with nature. But occasionally I learn something as well. Usually it’s just local historical trivia, or maybe a geography lesson. But sometimes the lesson is more personal, and as in this case, tragic.
The morning started out with a trip to the Trinity Trails in Wylie, Texas for some hiking and caching. We chose to start at the easternmost trailhead, which was also the closest to us.
Two weeks ago my wife told me about a new park she had discovered while killing time between a couple of the kids’ classes.
While climbing an overpass she caught site of some paved trails just off the road that interested her enough to want to Google it later. The trails turned out to be part of Suncreek Park in Allen, Texas. The website claims Suncreek sports only four tenths of a mile of paved trails, so it’s not much for walking, hiking, or biking. It does sport some scenic views, though, as well as a handful of geocaching opportunities. One unexpected and mysterious feature deserves further exploration, as I will soon relate.
