So...after nearly ten years of marriage (and almost eleven years together), John and I finally bought a new bedroom set!  No longer did we have Early American Yard Sale decor in our bedroom; we finally had a complete matching set, with a Queen-sized bed and everything.

We bought our new bedroom set at The Room Store, using one of those great 0% financing deals.  Shopping for our bedroom set, though, proved to be more difficult that we thought.  For one thing, we already had a full-sized mattress set that wasn't that old; we had purchased it in 2002 and it was still in excellent condition. However, in order to get the bedroom set that we wanted, we had to upgrade to a Queen and buy a new mattress set.  After much hemming and hawing, we decided to go for it.

But what to do with our old full-sized mattress set?  While I had no problem leaving the old dressers and nightstands out on the curb for anyone to take, I couldn't see doing the same thing with the mattress, not when it was so new.  Then we realized that there was one place where we could donate it and keep it for ourselves, too: the Gaard-Chak, in Overgaard!  We had already been planning to donate our old analog twenty-seven inch television from our bedroom (after we upgraded to a digital set), so we thought, why not just plan a trip up to the Chak, to donate our things to the common good?

We decided to spend Super Bowl weekend at the Gaard-Chak.  Although we had to be home before noon on Super Bowl Sunday (in time to host a small party), that still granted us enough time to do what we needed to do and to do a little geocaching as well.

In order to get the television set and the bed up north to the Chak, John had to rent a small U-Haul trailer.  We loaded it up the night before; then, the next morning, around 8:00 a.m., we left for Overgaard.

It took us about two and a half hours to get to Overgaard, taking SR 87 to SR 260.  When we arrived, the first thing we did was remove the old full-sized bed - the one with the dip in the middle - from the spare bedroom and replace it with our bed.  We then loaded the old bed into the U-Haul so that we could take it to the dump.  Finally, we moved the television set into the living room and replaced the twenty-four inch television set that was already there.  That set would not be going to the dump; we would let Bill and Erika decide what they wanted to do with that one.

Once the bed was loaded in the U-Haul, we immediately drove it to the town dump, all the while singing "Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie.  (We just hoped that we wouldn't have to drive off the side of a side road to look for a place to leave the bed.  No, we wouldn't really do that, but it's in the song.  If you've never heard it before, listen to it.)  The good news was, the dump was open that morning, so we drove in and dropped off the bed.  Twelve dollars later (six dollars for each piece!), the old bed was gone, and we returned to the Gaard-Chak with an empty U-Haul trailer.

We left the empty trailer at the Chak and immediately went to the grocery store to get supplies for the weekend.  On the way to the store, we stopped by the new thrift shop, at the corner of SR 277 and Buckskin Road.  This was a very nice little shop, and we found some fun things there.  Mary bought a Hannah Montana doll that looked almost new, and we also picked up a Clue board game to play later.

After we bought groceries, we returned to the Chak to have lunch.  Then, following lunch, we did something that we don't normally do; we relaxed at the Gaard-Chak.  That's right; we did nothing.  Mary and John worked a puzzle, and I played an addicting game on my iPhone.

As you can imagine, we got bored of that after a while and decided to go geocaching, just to get out of the house.  We had several waypoints loaded into the GPS - enough for a couple of hours of geocaching fun.

The first one that we found was near the Mogollon Airpark; it was an easy find...once we figured out which side of the runway we needed to be on!  The next one, however, was a little more difficult to find.  Based on the map, it looked like we needed to get to Bigler Road, which we could access from Tonto Drive.  It seemed easy enough, but the challenge was finding the right road that would lead us to Tonto Drive.  We took Homestead Drive and ended up on a narrow dirt road; although it led us in the right direction...before it dead-ended at someone's property line!  Frustrated, we turned around and tried Apache Drive.  That one got us through to Bigler Road.  Bigler Road soon took us to a dirt road that quickly turned into a 4WD road.  We followed it for about two miles, taking it slowly so as not to damage our vehicle, until we finally came to the cache site. 

Once we claimed that cache, we returned to the pavement and took Mogollon Drive out to SR 277 and drove back into Overgaard to find the next few caches.  These caches would be found along Black Canyon Road, which is next to the IBG grocery store, where we had done our shopping.   Nicknamed "A Journey Through Time" by the Forest Service, Black Canyon Road would become Forest Road 86 as it passed over the forest service boundary.  Along the way, there are historical placards, pictographs, and even a graveyard.  And yes, there were geocaches, too.

The first geocache was just off the forest road, at one of the historical placards.  The GPS indicated that the cache was about 75 feet away from the marker, which would put it high up in the rocks on the hill.  Mary was excited, because that gave her the opportunity to do some rock climbing.  While John and I looked for the cache, Mary climbed almost all the way up the hill and played among the boulders until we told her it was time to come down.

We didn't find the cache up there, although there were many excellent hiding places among the rocks.  Just as we were giving up and returning to the 4Runner, though, John found it, hidden behind a giant boulder...at the base of the hill!  In other words, all that effort, for nothing.

The next cache was about a mile down the road and located along a trail.  The trail would lead us to a rocky hill containing lots of pictographs, a quarter of a mile away.  Though the trail didn't have a name (or at least none that we could find), we knew that it was stop number three along the Journey Through Time historic route.

To get to the cache, we parked the 4Runner at the stop and walked along the footpath until we reached the creek.  Along the way, we walked through patches of snow; though much of the area had already thawed, there was still snow to be found in areas without much direct sunlight.  And where there was snow, there were children playing in it.  Just across the creek, we saw a family of five playing in a large patch of snow - trying to squeeze out just one more snow-play day that winter.

We crossed the creek (which was still partially frozen) and continued to follow the trail on the other side.  The trail paralleled the creek for about a tenth of a mile as it curved around the base of the rocky hill, at the top of which were the pictographs.  From the bottom of the hill, it was hard to make out the drawings, but we decided not to climb up to see them.  In fact, we only had to climb a quarter of the way up to retrieve the cache.

After signing the log, we put the cache back where we had found it and started back down the trail.  Just then, we spied a bald eagle flying overhead - what a majestic sight that was!  It made for a perfect conclusion to our adventure.

There were other caches that we could have found, but we decided to call it quits for the day.  It was getting late, and we needed to get back to the Gaard-Chak to cook dinner.

We spent a very relaxing evening at the Gaard-Chak.  After dinner, we popped some Jiffy Pop on the stove, then opened up the Clue game that we had purchased at the thrift store.  It had been a very long time since either of us had played, so we had to look up the directions on the internet first, before we could teach Mary how to play.  (The instructions were missing from the box.)  Once she learned how to play, Mary loved the game so much that we played three rounds.  John, of course, won all three.

Later, we relaxed by a nice, warm fire and watched movies until it was time for bed.  No doubt about it: there's nothing like a roaring fire to calm the soul.  Despite all of the stress in life, I felt so relaxed by the time we retired for the night that I fell right to sleep...

The next morning, the three of us awoke with the sun and prepared to drive back to Phoenix.  We were so efficient that we managed to get on the road by 8:00 a.m.  After an uneventful drive, we arrived at the U-Haul dealer, near 32nd Street and Bell, by 10:30 a.m., to turn in the trailer. 

And soon thereafter, we were home, with plenty of time before the Super Bowl began!

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