CANTON TRADE DAYS PART ONE

Gateway to the Canton Trade Days Flea Market, originally uploaded by jimbwalking.

My wife and I travel to Canton Texas a couple of times a year to attend Trade Days, the largest flea market in the state of Texas. The market takes place each month on what locals call the First Monday of the month. This actually means that the market is open on Thursday thru Sunday before the first Monday of the month. I know this can be confusing, but get your calendar out an count backward, then you will understand how it works.

A couple of years ago this coming Spring my wife and I planned our trip much the same way as we usually do with one exception, this year we were going to geo-cache our way to Canton. We would leave our home in the afternoon and take our same route South through Ada then Tuledo and enter Texas at Sherman-Denison where the geo-caching would begin!

First we would stop at the M-K-T depot and search out the moument commemorating Engine NO. 15, the first train to enter Texas from the North. Then on to Eisenhower State Park and view the statute of the late President, Dwight D. Eisenhower who was born in Denison Texas October 14, 1890. At each site we gathered the information needed to prove to the geo-cacher who had hidden the caches that we were there.

Our day finally ended at Greenville Texas our regular stopping point on the trip to Canton. We had dinner at Tamale’s, a wonderful Tex-Mex restaurant and after stuffing ourselves with chips, salsa and fajitas we went to hunt the last cache of the day. A memorial to Audie Murphy the most decorated soldier of World War II. Audie Murphy lived in the small town of Celeste Texas just a short distance to the North of Greenville where he worked before enlisting into the Army.