The bags have been packed, the car loaded, Zia (my cat) petted one more time after I had found her "hiding place" for 40 minutes while I looked for her, my Mother received a kiss, and I was off to Sioux Falls, SD to board the plane to Stockholm, Sweden. Due to a "mechanical" problem, we didn't depart for Chicago until 2 1/2 hours past the scheduled departure time. But not to worry, I still have a couple of hours to make the plane in Chicago.
Just to back up a bit, I made a quick trip to Forest City, IA, early in the week to take in a day at the Winnebago Grand National Rally. Attendance was down some this year--and it was hot as usual--but it is always wonderful to see old friends there. Thank you, Laurel, for your hospitality; it was much appreciated. I drove back to Hurley Wednesday a.m. to find Zia was still not recovering well from what ailed her, so off to the vet (again) we went. Still couldn't figure out what was causing the fever and other problems so a different antibiotic was prescribed which seems to be working. Mom and I drove down to Yankton for a few hours on Friday and Saturday to see those gathered for the annual Rayburn Family reunion. Busy schedules and the hot weather kept attendance down some, but a good group made it. Speaking of hot weather, the temperatures in SD this past week ranged from about 100 degrees in Hurley (southeastern SD) to 110 in central and western SD. Heat indexes were WAY HIGH! The corn is burning up and the beans are showing stress. Needless to say, there won't be any bumper crops in this part of the country this year.
Now for a little background on this trip. When I was in the 5th grade (a long time ago <G> ) I was given the name of a Swedish girl to correspond with as a "pen pal". (I doubt this is done any more since I never hear the term now.) Her name was Mari-Anne and I began writing to her. Sometime later I received a letter from her and we continued to correspond until she was in college, after which contact between us was lost. She came across an old letter I had written in late 2010 and "found" me on Facebook in early 2011. We have since picked up our correspondence back and forth and I was so pleased to be able to finally meet Mari-Anne, her husband Gunnar, and a daughter Maria in AZ in May 2011 where we began discussing the possibilities of my coming to see them in Sweden. There is a lot more to this story that I won't write here, but it has been a very interesting and fun year re-connecting with her. You would not believe what close proximity we have been in SD and in AZ over the past 3 or 4 years but, since we weren't in communication, we did not know of the other's whereabouts.
I will fly all night on SAS Airlines, arriving in Stockholm about 7:50 a.m. Monday. As far as I can tell, there is a 7-hour time difference between U.S. CDT and Sweden's time. The next post will be from Sweden--assuming Mari-Anne and Gunnar don't keep me too busy to write and I can find a WIFI connection somewhere. If it becomes too much of a chore to post while I'm taking in the sights, I promise I will do a big post when I return to the U.S.
MONDAY, JULY 23, 2012
Well, the 2 hours I had in Chicago yesterday were just enough to make the boarding for the flight to Stockholm! The flight over was a good one with an on-time arrival. Mari-Anne and Gunnar were there to meet me and we drove to their home where I deposited my bags and we had lunch. (They live in Jakobsberg which is about 20 miles northwest of Stockholm.) We did some sightseeing in their neighborhood during the afternoon. They had expressed an interest in learning what geocaching is about, so we incorporated some of that in the afternoon, too. The first cache was close to their home, but it became quite problematical to find it. After spending some time walking/crawling through tall grass and brush on a very steep slope, we decided to leave that cache for a later day--if ever. <G> However, we did find two caches and I launched a travel bug named "South
Dakota Traveler #2" in one which was located on the grounds of a very old mansion. We also walked to see the remains of a prehistoric fortification overlooking Lake Malaren--Sweden's third largest lake. The fort, named Gaseborg, was probably built during the late Iron Age (500-1100 A.D.) to supervise and control the waterway below. The view from here is beautiful! We wrapped up the sightseeing in the local neighborhood and, upon returning home, I went straight to bed--jet lag had finally caught up with me!
Mari-Anne & Gunnar Stignas
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| Logging the first cache found in Sweden |
This post is being written from Norway on July 28th. I have been plagued by computer problems all week after having used this new notebook computer exclusively for two weeks prior to departing SD to ensure that all the programs were working appropriately. Somewhere between Sioux Falls and Stockholm the Internet Explorer program went "haywire" so I couldn't get to Earthlink. Finally IE began working after several hours of working on it, then Word was bad. It cannot be opened, so I am resorting to WordPad to write the posts. I won't have spell check and the other features Word has to make a good document; however, I believe everyone reading this will bear with me and hopefully will forgive errors and omissions that may be present.
