Birthday Treasure Hunt

Birthday gifts for Kim are not easy to acquire.  He loves tools - but I could never choose tools for him because he either has what he needs or it is much too expensive.  He loves tee-shirts with funny sayings on them - but he owns a plethora of tee shirts, so much so that there is no more room in his closet, and he buys them himself whenever he sees one he likes.  He isn't into electronics or movies or office supplies.

So this year I researched Pinterest and decided to make him a treasure hunt.  I had visions of planting little gifts (but what?) all over town in places that had meaning to us as we reminisced of years gone by.  Of course plans such as that never seem to come to fruition.  I ran out of time (and energy) and was not able to hide any fun treasures.  However, I did make a fun treasure map with clues of places to go.

Kim does like playing games, so I think he got a little kick out of trying to solve the clues.  I use the treasure map and had all of the clues relate to a pirate theme.  

With the map came this note:

And so it begins . . . .

A legend has long been told

Of treasure whose worth is more than gold

Clues and a map shall lead

Only the wise will succeed

X marks the spot of the bounty to be found

A celebration of birth for a pirate so renowned

He then was given a clue for the place he had to visit to get the next clue. 

The first clue took us to BJ's grave at the Mantua Cemetery - it was Memorial Day Weekend after all!  I had some flowers that we put on his grave.  After only a couple of minutes we decided to move on.

 The clues were a mixture of notes, coded phrases, and pictures blown up to only show a few pixels.  He had to solve each clue to figure out where to go next.  

The second place was Mantua Reservoir where we had spent many hours boating and skiing, however it was jam-packed with people so we decided to go to the Country Store and get an ice cream.  We were having fun, but I was coming to the realization that the romantic reminiscing was not in the cards.  I should have known that time with Kim is more about laughs and fun than romance and sappy memories.  

The next clue took us to the softball diamond where we had spend many, many nights when our kids were young.  There was a couple of years that between the two of us we played six nights a week!  There were no games at the softball diamond but we noticed that there was a lot of activity at the new Pickleball Courts so we headed over there.  We ran into Jessica Parrish, Mitch's wife, and she gave us a rundown on the rules of the play since we had never seen it before.  Apparently they were having a huge tournament with contestants coming from all over the United States that day.  We watched for a few minutes but it was soon onto the  next clue.

Next we were to go to the place where Kim proposed (I was very surprised at how quickly he solved that clue)!  We decided not to drive that far and headed to the next place, his mother's house.  Many great memories have been created at that house!  Kim's mom had the next clue and his nieces helped him solve the next coded cipher which took us to Costa Vida for dinner.  We didn't actually have too many memories there because it has only been in town for a short time, but it has really good food!  When we arrived we ran into Bob and Marlene Spendlove, friends that we haven't seen for years!  They invited us to join them and we had a great dinner and visit with old friends.  

The final clue lead us to the highlight of the evening, Walker Cinemas for a showing of 

It was a great movie, both of us enjoyed it immensely.  And a perfect ending to the pirate treasure hunt.

I think Kim had a great time throughout the evening and I know that I certainly did.  

Happy Birthday Kim!