Caches, Climbing, and Karaoke

A beautiful and most enjoyable day. Given the ongoing turmoil in the wake of Hurricane Irene, which passed us by with barely a big wind, it does make one thankful for being spared nature's temper, at least this time around. Got going fairly early and headed to Eden, a few miles up the road, to hunt a cache that was published last week but had not as yet been found. It's at the site of an old cotton mill, of which nothing remains but the foundations. To get to the cache site, you enter the old foundation, climb through a window, and voilà...you're at a hidden dam and waterfall back in the woods, which, from street level, you'd never expect to be there. I actually discovered the place a few years ago while hunting an older cache, which has since been archived. To my surprise, I did manage to get first-to-find on "Portal to the Past" (GC32XW0); my thanks to the cache owner for bringing me back to a favorite location.

From there, it was up to Fieldale, VA, just outside of Martinsville, for the August geoclubsouthva event (GC2Y6MB), which, this time, offered not only lots of food treats but karaoke and a new, somewhat terrain-intensive cache courtesy of Christopher "Ranger Fox" Hall. A bunch of us undertook the terrain challenge to get first-to-find...a challenge made a bit more intense when we realized there was a giant wasp nest inches from the cache's hiding place. You don't want to rile wasps while at the height of this particular terrain. It could kill you....

I decided to be a mean, rotten son of a beech and participate in the karaoke activity. I will say it didn't appear to drive anyone away, at least immediately, but those who witnessed it seem to have become babbling, drooling lunatics, some of them homicidal. Perhaps I went too far. At least several of the other participants offered far more soothing sounds. Certainly not due to any advantage other than luck of the draw, I won a nice prize—a well-stocked, ready-to-go geocache container—just for being mean enough to sing.

Many mini tanks for that.

And tonight, Ms. B. is coming round for some Chinese food and a movie. How in hell is it Sunday already, though? Monday is closing in all too quickly, as it always does....

Wonder what's happening over yonder?

Oh. It's Ranger Fox. On the trestle. Placing a cache.

Fox places cache on the trestle. Rodan thus climbs the trestle.
Rodan signs log on the trestle. Rodan getting down is the fun part.