By Nancy Huddleston, Editor

According to Kaitlyn Meyers, her mother was the most obsessed one in the family when it came to searching for the 2009 Dan Patch Days horseshoe.

After all, Julie Meyers was the one who got out of the car in the pouring rain one day to look around the new city monument sign on County Road 42.

“I’m sure I gave the guys at Southcross Auto a good giggle that day,” Julie says, clarifying she was looking there for a very good reason -- the clue references to “Mc this and O that” could have corresponded to a nearby McDonald’s and O’Reilly Auto Parts.

“I stayed in the car,” Kaitlyn quickly interjects.

But Kaitlyn was the one with the cell phone busily looking up key words on the Internet as she rode around with her mother looking for possible horseshoe locations.

Furthermore, Kaitlyn proclaims she is the one whose hunches have correctly identified the location of several of the past horseshoes that the family has searched for, but hasn’t found.

“It was just her and I and we were out driving and we saw the park (Boudin’s Acres) from the road and I said it could be there, just like the year I said it was at Camp Savage and at McQuiston Court,” said the 16-year-old, noting that “no one listens to the middle child,” which is met by knowing sighs from everyone in the living room.

Twelve-year-old Daniel Meyers has tried to stay as far away as possible from his family’s pastime, but says he was dragged to Prior Lake High School one day by his mother. That was the day she put together the phrase about “something important happening in ‘04” because the high school opened that year and the stadium is named after Dan Patch.

“How many thousands of steps did you say I made you walk?” his mother asked.

“I don’t know,” Daniel answers, but a few minutes later recalls the figure as 1,343 steps while also interjecting an eye roll.

The family patriarch, Tom, said he is the most sane and least obsessed person in the family, in terms of searching for the horseshoe.

But he’s quick to point out -- many times during the conversation and always with a glance towards his wife -- that HE found the horseshoe in the mulch around a tree at Boudin’s Acres Park.

“Only because you were ahead of me on the path,” Julie said.

The quest

The Meyers family has been looking for the lost horseshoe for many years and has always been close, but not close enough.

This year’s clues were the most challenging, Julie said, because they worked for so many different locations.

For a while, they were certain the horseshoe was near the McColl Pond Environmental Learning Center (ELC). They applied the clue about the “Mc this and O that” to the brick patio and applied others to the pond and surrounding areas.

“We found the clues fit everywhere at the ELC because all the points seemed to come together,” Tom said. “But in the end, it was a matter of making the clues fit right.”

By the end of the day Saturday, Julie wasn’t certain they’d ever find it. Then she typed in what she thought were some key words on the Web site Wikipedia and stumbled upon the fact that Le Boudin was a musical piece written for the French Foreign Legion.

“Everything fit into place when I found that,” Julie said of that “ah ha” moment, knowing they needed to go to Boudin’s Acres Park off 146th Street and Louisiana Avenue.

On Sunday morning Tom went with her to the park.

“She was to the point of obsessive,” Tom said. “So I’d made up my mind that if I found it, I would not tell her until we got home. But I kicked the wood chips a bit and it was there. I wasn’t expecting it.”

After Julie and Tom high five’d for finding the horseshoe, they headed home.

Kaitlyn had just gotten out of bed and figured her mom had been on “another wild goose chase.”

“She holds it up and just starts laughing hysterically,” Kaitlyn said, “I thought she’d officially lost it then.”

Kaitlyn and Daniel said the search for the horseshoe was ongoing. Tom said the quest was “no doubt” the worst it’s ever been for the family.

“We’d be in the car going somewhere and she’d (her mother) say, ‘let’s quick go here,’” Kaitlyn said.

Eldest son Tony, 20, who is a student at the University of Minnesota, participated in the search when he was home and his father said he pretty much acted disinterested. But his mother notes she found out after finding the horseshoe Sunday morning that Tony and a friend went out Saturday night in the dark looking for it.

So although her family is quick to say she’s the obsessed one when it comes to the horseshoe hunt because she’s been talking to herself about the clues for weeks on end, Julie said they each were equally interested and involved in the hunt.

“I always tell them it’s not bad to talk to yourself, but when you start answering yourself you should worry,” Julie said.

“She was answering herself,” Kaitlyn points out with a raised eyebrow.

Nancy Huddleston can be reached at editor@savagepacer.com.