Returning Home From Louisiana

We left Lafayette this morning to begin our trip back to Santa Fe. We were up at 5:30am and we got everything packed and loaded into the car. We had gassed up the car the night before so when we got the car loaded we were ready to go. We told my sister and her family bye and headed out. We stopped in Carencro to pick up my friend Eddie - we were giving him a ride back to Dallas. Eddie doesn't enjoy letterboxing so we didn't plan any stops to look for boxes between Lafayette and Dallas. We stopped once for gas and once to get a bite to eat. It was a pretty uneventful trip and we dropped Eddie at his house at about 1:00pm. We decided to stop in McKinney to do a little letterboxing - as many times as we have made the drive from Santa Fe to Lafayette we have never stopped in McKinney. I had clues for about 13 boxes and we decided to look for boxes until it got dark and then it would be time to continue our driving. We hoped to make it to Wichita Falls for the night.

Our first stop in McKinney was at the Pecan Grove Memorial Cemetery. It was a nice cemetery and we enjoyed walking around. We looked for and found two boxes in the cemetery - Old Leathercoat, Texas Governors Series and Worst Driver in the World. Two great boxes by Boots Tex and Puddle Splasher - thanks guys. From here we drove just down the road to McKinney Community Center. After parking we headed down the Nature Trail. We had clues for three boxes. We easily found Dolphin in the Creek and Folk Art Series - Quilting. There was one more box but we were unable to find Signpost #3. We did try and follow the directions looking everywhere between Signpost #2 and Signpost #4 but we came up empty handed. We retraced our steps back to the beginning of the trail and looked for another box. We found the area but it looked like it had been cleaned up and we didn't find that box either. Time to head to another area. We drove to Erwin Park and found the starting point to look for four boxes. We headed down the trail and easily found Horn 1867. Once that was replaced we continued on the trail to look for the Let's Do Lunch! Series. We found Box #1 sitting out in the open, stamped in and then rehid it. We followed the clues for Box #2 but we got confused and things didn't seem to make sense and we never found the box. It was starting to get dark so we continued on the trail for Box #3. Again, we found this box out in the open. So we stamped in and rehid the box better than we found it. We then headed back the way we came and made our way back to the car. By the time we exited the park it was dark.

We took Hwy 380 west and stopped in Denton for some food and to gas up the car. We made it to Wichita Falls and found a hotel for the night. There was quite a bit of snow and ice along the road during our drive and the parking lot at the hotel was covered as well. We heard that they were expecting more bad weather the next day. So we decided to go to bed early and get an early start in the morning.