Scavenger Hunt on the Fox River Trail


I spent five hours on the hard, wooden chair in front of my iMac today. It went by in the blink of an eye, although I don’t think I blinked much while I was staring at the monitor.
While the birds sang outside, I was tweeting inside. I found out earlier this morning that today is Star Wars day and I had to join the party on Twitter. By the way, May the Fourth be with you! I have never felt so connected to my fellow geeks!
I also joined in the twitterview with Romeo The Cat, a tan and white Persian who helps Petside raise awareness and money for his fellow animals. He is such a great example to my cats: they lionize him, so to speak. I had to talk to him, for them.
Then while the apartment workers were fixing the patio outside, I was working on Word Hunt on Facebook inside. My score was in the top 200 and I am two points from earning an imaginary friend to play with! I will have about twenty celebrities to choose from, but I am torn between Elvis and Archimedes. I am tempted by Indiana Jones, too; he is a professor, after all! Darth Vader is on the list, I think, but he cheats. Any one of them will be a great help, though, as they will give me another letter rack to search.
I started to feel as stiff as the chair around two o’clock. I realized that my fingers were the only body part that moved the entire time my daughter Samma was at school. I ate, stretched and made some tea.
By quarter to three, the caffeine from my tea was kicking in so I was ready to go, go, go! I picked up Samma, and we got her scooter and some old bread to feed the geese, and we went to Old Mill Park in Geneva.
For some reason, maybe the OCD, or maybe from reading The DaVinci code, I notice things. I just notice lots of little things. Today I noticed a lot of odd things people left along the trail from Old Mill to the Japanese Tea Garden. It was like a scavenger hunt, for which I didn’t have a list.
It was just like playing Word Hunt, but instead of letters, I found objects people had cast off during their trip down the trail. Strangely, much of it starts with the letter B or P. Were this a Dan Brown novel, perhaps I could tell you the secret of the universe from that code.
Instead, I have an excuse to get back in front of my Mac.
Following is the missing list for the scavenger hunt, if anyone might care to join me in collecting some of these items later this week, when I am not so sore. If Samma goes too, she will not be on the scooter, I assure you.

Abandoned items on the trail:
Two baby bibs: one in the gazebo and one on a bush
A black button between the boards on the viewing deck
A white ponytail holder
Paper plates
Parts of a styrofoam cooler
A brown Bandaid with horseshoe designs on it, stuck to a retaining wall
Gardener’s gloves stuck in a fence and forgotten
Sport socks hanging on a bush
A light brown Pipe cleaner

Natural Items that also caught my eye:
Tiny fresh catnip leaves for my kitties
Strawberry plants looking for strawberry fields
Three huge great Danes taking their day off from guarding the gates of Hades
A little white Poodle mix patiently fishing with his family
A teensy Chihuahua-Italian Greyhound mix rocking a snazzy backpack
A baby shepherd who didn’t seem to want to be on the pavement
A high school cross-country team, with and without shirts (Samma noticed, not me)
Someone practicing hockey on roller blades
A sweet young couple with their little baby boy in his stroller
And to top it off: more riverbugs than there are stars in the Alderaan system