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| Some nice Geocaching buddies near Ferrum, VA |
Closing in on
10,000 geocache finds, I am. Picked up an even dozen this weekend, bringing my total find count to
9,921. I am hoping to make the
10K find... whenever and whatever it might be... something memorable, so I need to start doing my research. It would be great if it involves kayaking and is close to a winery, in which case Ms. Brugger would be inclined to join the fun.
After spending Friday and Saturday looking after my mom in Martinsville, I set out after a few caches before heading home. Three new ones had come out around
Ferrum,
VA, where I went to college back in the darkest of dark ages, so I decided to target them. They had been published several days earlier, but, surprisingly, no one had logged finds on them. Fortuitously, I managed to claim
FTF on all three by an hour or so, as longtime geocachers (and forest rangers)
TracksAll & Will Ketchum apparently came along soon after me. I
almost feel bad for beating them to the punch, since they don't get to cache nearly as much as they used to. But hey, a smiley is a smiley, and an
FTF is a damn near empty honorific, at best.
From there, the Rodan Mobile conveyed me to
Fairy Stone Park, where I have spent many happy times and found numerous caches over the years. There was a relatively new one there, which did not appear to involve significant hiking... until I opted to depart the trail and make a beeline for the cache. Making a beeline for the cache turned out to be more like hauling one's self up and over one majestic incline after another, and reaching the cache involved a rather precarious change in elevation just above a creek. On my egress, I decided to keep to the trail, which proved less rigorous but also involved no little altering of altitude.
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| Hanging out with funky little Tiki Dude |
Then it was on to
Eden, NC. Here, there were several more to find (two of which I sadly did not), including a wondrous, beastly little hide amid a massive network of roots in a deep, dank ravine, which I found to be a pure joy in the driving rain that had begun to fall. You may think I speak facetiously, but I do not speak facetiously, for I had a grand time of it making this find (admittedly with a modicum of help from friend
Night-Hawk (a.k.a. Tom).
Drenched and exhausted, I eventually made it home. Then, this morning, friend
Robgso (a.k.a. Rob) and I made another fine day of it, first at
Hagan Stone Park in southern Guilford County, then at
Cedar Rock Park in Alamance County, and then in
Saxapahaw, on a scenic trail along the
Haw River. Lunch at the
Saxapahaw General Store was, hardly unexpectedly, among the day's highlights. Ms. B. and I have had some mighty good meals at this place over the years, and today the goat burger was the item of choice, and a fine one at that. Caching-wise, we found a couple of particularly enjoyable hides, including a rat in a tree and a funky little coconut Tiki dude. We finished our hunt—successfully—at the edge of the
Buckhorn Gamelands, where we have cached on many previous occasions, and then we came home, where I fell over and went boom.
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| Rodan's Roots? |
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| View of Philpott Lake from the Lake Shore Trail |
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| View of the Haw River |
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| Found along the Haw River Trail |
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| Old, crumbling dam on a Haw River tributary |
