OHIO

Last weekend my beloved and I had a chance to go to Ohio to visit some old friends. We lived in Ohio 1982-1986, first in Cuyohoga county (Parma) and then in Lorain County (Elyria). Those were good years. I was a young stay-at-home mom raising my two rambunctious boys and my sweetie had his hands full doing agricultural research for a private chemical company. We haven't been back in over 20 years, but when we heard there was going to be a 25-year reunion of the the people from our church who were around when the congregation first started we knew we wanted to go. My husband was in the first bishopric of the newly formed Elyria ward and I was RS president for a while, so we were pretty involved.

It was so good to see people from that time in our lives and to drive around looking at places we remembered well.

Lots of changes since that time. Part of the town were barely recognizable to us. But one of our favorite spots, Cascade Park, was still pretty much the same. This is where our boys played soccer every fall, went sledding in the winters, and where we had lots of family picnics in the the summertimes.

We attempted to find a geocache hidden there but got stuck in the mud - LITERALLY. We walked off the main trail up to some rocks where the cache was supposed to be. I sank up past my ankles in deep goo. I squirmed and pulled trying to get my feet out. My right foot came out - shoe stayed behind. Then when I twisted to try to get my left foot free I lost my balance and ended up smack on the cold wet ground making mud angels. NOT good considering we were on our way to the airport to fly home and now I was totally covered in mud. We got out our suitcase and found me something presentable to wear but my shoes were a total loss. I wore my glamorous blue fuzzy slippers home looking like I had smurf feet.

So we never did find the cache.

But mud and all we had a great visit. It was a quick trip flying out Friday and coming home Monday, but it was worth every minute.