The Blog Where Horror Dwells: The Doom That Came to Eden

Sunday, May 10, 2020

The Doom That Came to Eden

So says a line on stone marker placed at the remains of an old scout camp in the deep woods of the Uwharries, about 40 miles south of Greensboro. The marker is part of a multi-cache that requires gathering certain information about the location to procure the coordinates to the final stage. ’Tis a fun one, which I found today.

I woke to a beautiful Sunday morning, just the kind for hitting the geocaching trail. Still, facing the day required a little extra coffee, since yesterday was Ms. B.’s birthday and we pulled quite the late-niter celebrating her now-excessive age. Once duly fortified, I hit the road for the Uwharries, specifically the Joe Moffit Trailhead at the King Mountain Trail, not far south of Asheboro. There I met friend Natalie (a.k.a. Fishdownthestair) and — due to certain complications, a bit later, out on the trail — friend Scott (a.k.a. Diefenbaker). It turned out to be (mostly) an excellent location for social distancing. And we about wore ourselves out on the hike, I can tell you, for the Uwharries are not flat. Not even a little bit. At the end of it, we put in about six miles, which made us about eight geocaches richer.

The scenery certainly hit the spot today. Our hike on King Mountain led us to an old scout camp (“Camp 7”), which is where we found the aforementioned stone marker, as well as the remains a much older well. From there, we went up Little Long Mountain, which led us to a fairly scenic overlook. Unfortunately, it was also the only place where we ran into a concentration of people. Fortunately, not a huge one, but there were enough about that we spent less time and took fewer photos at the location than we might have otherwise. Still, we claimed a cache at the site, and thus we found happiness.

After that, Natalie went her way, and Scott and I headed after a cache at the Lewis-Thornburg house, a restored farm dating back to the 1880s, right on the edge of the Birkhead Mountains Wilderness area. Here, we also encountered a few folks, mostly at the parking lot, but as it turned out, they all headed in different directions than Scott and I. So, we were able to explore the old farm and hunt the cache sans muggles, which is always a happy thing, even when we’re not overly concerned with social distancing.

And all that wandering about wore me out real good. I even came damn near taking a nap late this afternoon, which is highly uncustomary. It almost makes me wonder if some of Kimberly's old age isn’t wearing off on me.