Anniversary - Pirate Treasure Edition

For our 18th wedding anniversary, I decided to create a pirate treasure hunt for my wife. I wanted her to take an adventure with me and my son…to get away from the stresses of life and explore places she’s never been before. So, my son and I plotted out six parks in the area that were beautiful and unique.

In each one, I identified a hiding spot and buried a clue. The clue was a photograph with GPS coordinates on the back of it. Each set of GPS coordinates would lead her to a new park and the photograph would lead her to the precise location of the next clue.

Today, I presented her with a card that contained the first clue. So, we packed up the car and headed to the first stop. When we got out of the car, I handed her a shovel and said, “You’re going to need this.”

My wife replied, “Are you kidding me?!”

“What’s a pirate treasure hunt without buried treasure?” I laughed.

Off we went down a path toward the lake. As we got closer, my wife got really excited. “Oh my gosh, that’s the tree from the picture right there! Now what?”

“Now, you find the treasure.”

“Okay, baby,” she told my son. “Help mama find a clue to where the treasure is buried.”

After a few minutes of exploring, she located a rock, half buried in the dirt, that had a pirate skull emblazoned across it. She excitedly began to dig and found a rolled up photograph rubber banded inside a plastic baggie. Finding another set of coordinates on the back, she punched them into her phone. We hustled back to the car and headed off to another clue. This one buried under a bridge that arched over a little creek. Which led to a clue stuffed into the cracks of a stone wall in another park. Which led to a clue buried in between the “knees” of a cypress tree next to a duck pond. Which led to a clue buried next to a fallen tree in another park. Which led to a clue buried next to a boulder near another duck pond. In each place, we explored the parks and chased our son around. We spent time as a family, enjoying the weather and having fun.

The final clue led us back home to our own front flower bed. There, buried under the silver dollar bush, my wife finally unearthed a small black chest. When she opened it, she found it was filled with gold and silver coins! They were in reality chocolate wrapped coins…which my son found more of a treasure than some worthless gold or silver piece of metal. But the true treasure was a pair of ruby earrings that my wife loved.

She would tell me later that she was blown away by the amount of time and thought I had put into this. I told her the coolest part was that the path she’d driven actually plotted out to exactly 18 miles to commemorate our anniversary. She had a lot of fun and was able to put aside her cares and troubles for a day, which was the most important part for me.