Kingdom of the Spiders

After work, Kimberly and I paid a visit to the very nice Bistro B Wine Bar in Kernersville, then headed over to Prissy Polly's Barbecue for a geocaching event honoring Christopher "Ranger Fox" Hall for achieving a momentous milestone — having found 30,000 geocaches. Whoa, and all. From there, she and I headed up to Lake Brandt to go on an enjoyable nighttime hike on the Laurel Bluff Trail, where my night cache, "The Missing: Dweller in Darkness" (GC3G3N7), resides. I wanted make sure the reflector trail was in good condition — it was — but mainly it was just a good night to go out on a hike and commune with spiders. For oh, my lord, they are out there in force. Big ones, little ones, teeny ones, giant ones. The forest was absolutely brilliant with their glowing eyes in the beams of our lights. Some were bright enough to mistake for reflective fire tacks — and perhaps ironically, those that glowed brightest belonged to the smallest spiders. We did come upon the second-biggest spider in the world's third largest cousin, pictured above, which made Kimberly holler. Some of you probably heard it. (The biggest spider in the world lives over in Burlington; my friend Paul found it on a caching outing one night a few years ago, and he's been in recovery ever since.) The spiders didn't bother me, but I did fuss a bit when I found a slug crawling on me. Gooshy.