Camping at Temperance River: Pirate Treasure!

Our neighbor half way down the street brought a treasure box when we went camping.  He stuffed the inside with candy, and one evening, after all the kidlets were tucked into bed, he and Dr. Peds worked on drawing an excellent pirate treasure map.  They even burned the edges of the paper.  Included were all sorts of “pirate named” landmarks along the beach and river.  For example, the mouth of the river was labeled “Death Current” and the cliffs along side it were “Cliffs of Despair.”  In the dark we headed down to the beach and buried the treasure under a bush by a piece of driftwood.  “X” marked the spot on the map, of course.  We then rolled up the map and placed it inside an old looking glass bottle.  In the morning, the bottle was planted on a rock outcropping at the beach for little treasure hunters to discover.  

After examining the map closely, they were off.  They need a little work on their map reading skills, however, because they ended up . . . well, not in the right place, but that’s OK.  

They were getting closer, but they still were having trouble finding the “X” in the sand, made of rocks.  That’s OK.  Discovering pirate treasure should entail a bit of searching and work, right? 

Ah ha!  They began to dig.

Found!  Can you see the excitement on Mr. TOF’s face?  It was pretty much the greatest event of his life, I think.  Digging.  Buried treasure.  Candy.  Pirate maps.  It doesn’t get much better when you are five years old.  When we got home we had to put a pirate pillow case on his bed, and he kept the map.  We’ll probably need to frame that.  It really is a great map.