Swarming Through Moncure

Team 3Acrobats — Old Man Rodan, BigG7777, and Suntigres

Suntigres (a.k.a. Bridget), BigG7777 (a.k.a. Gerry), and Old Man Rodan made a fine day of geocaching in and around the towns of Pittsboro and Moncure, mostly targeting a bunch of little rubber bees from a series called "The Swarm," which comprises hundreds of caches over several counties in central and eastern NC. We started at UP! (GC20985), a wonderful cache up a grain silo just this side of Pittsboro. Suntigres and I had already found it several years ago, but since Mr. G. still needed it, we stopped at the location so he could perform the requisite daredevil acts. He did so readily, and since all of us could now claim UP! as a find, we settled on 3Acrobats as our team moniker for the day.

BigG goes UP!

Among the day's highlights was a multi-cache that took us to a little graveyard outside Moncure and a micro inside a crumbling old building that damn near forced us to live up to our team name (again), as we struggled to avoid falling through holes in floors, descended and then ascended partially collapsed stairs, and clambered and crawled through a dark cellar littered with lord knows what kind of pointy detritus; and a cache underneath an ancient concrete bridge over US Hwy 1. The cache container there, sadly, appears to have gone missing, though we did enjoy exploring the bridge's dark underbelly. Instead of a cache, we did find a partially eaten can of ravioli, which we offered to Suntigres to assuage her munchies, though she inexplicably declined our good-hearted gesture.

At the end of the day, I had added 27 caches to my total, which now stands at 9,903. I suppose it's time to start thinking about a specific, challenging cache to go after for find #10,000. I'm thinking something that requires a kayak and isn't far away from a decent winery.

 Cache on.

Inside and out

"He fell through a hole in the floor!"

Suntigres at the bridge