A mighty good kind of tired, though. A full weekend of geocaching — yesterday here in NC's Piedmont with Jeanne "Cantergirl" Allamby and Scott "Diefenbaker" Hager; today in the mountains in the western part of the state with Bridget "Suntigres" Langley. The old feets are a bit achy from many miles of walking, I can tell you, and though I applied the DEET liberally, the bitey bugs laughed it off and bit the hell out of me anyway.
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| Sign, sign, everywhere a sign |
Out at Lake Lure, not far from Chimney Rock State Park, NC, there's a geoart smiley — a smiley pattern on the map formed by geocache icons — made up of 53 separate caches, which are located all around the lake itself. Cell service in that area is spotty, to say the least, and since we at least partially relied on our phones for navigation, we occasionally ended up in slightly different areas than we had anticipated. No biggie; we got to see lots of impressive scenery. Though we finished the day with 50 or so cache finds, we didn't complete the entire smiley pattern, so we'll no doubt make a return visit to claim the rest of the hides.
Lake Lure is pretty touristy, with lots of muggle-friendly attractions, such as golfing, ziplining, boating, swimming, a few restaurants, bars, shops, etc. Along US Highway 64 through town, there's very a very high concentration of human-type animals, mostly quite annoying, but away from the hordes on the numerous narrow, windy back roads, the atmosphere is far more placid. Happily, we found a few spots possessed of an enjoyably eerie quality, such as a ravine from which rose the ominous baying of the Hounds of Tindalos, complete with a skull and crossbones warning sign.
It feels like it's time to crash and burn, so thus it shall be. Nighty-night. Mind those hell hounds.
L: Don't go there. R: Suntigres hastens to sign the log before the Hounds of Tindalos come hauling
out of the ravine to maim, murder, and mutilate.
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| Partially complete geoart smiley over Lake Lure |
