Old Places, Old Friends

“It’s in the trees! It’s coming!”

Good friends and geocaching partners, Gerry (a.k.a. BigG7777) & Bridget (a.k.a. Suntigres), late of nearby Kernersville, moved to Florida last year, which certainly made Brugger and me sad, at least for our sakes. I know Gerry & Bridget couldn’t be happier with their place down there, and that’s what matters. But since they recently came back to Kville for one of their regular visits, Ms. B. and I spent an enjoyable evening with them last night — at a respectable distance! — with delicious appetizers, pizza, and a few bottles of excellent wine. The night was pleasantly chilly, so we sat around their firepit enjoying the company and goodies until the old people — one of them, at least — began to fade a bit.

This morning, I hit the highway and met the mad Floridians at a lovely little cache where we found a much-needed helping hand. This one earned favorite points for creativity, gruesomeness, and humor. From there, we moved southward a bit through Randolph County, which has seen a veritable explosion of new caches in the past few months, largely courtesy of one labchic1. The majority of them are park & grab hides — meaning they are quick and easy enough to park, jump out, grab the cache, sign the log, and move on in short order. Happily, today, we found ourselves in any number of appealing settings, several of them old and haunted (my favorite kind, believe it or not), including a nice old graveyard. (Sadly, we failed to find the cache at the graveyard; it is likely missing.)

As for settings, I was most taken with the remains of a gas station, which likely went back 50 to 75 years; the crumbling skeleton of an old mansion (oddly, with a decomposing truck trailer parked in front of it); and an old plant of some sort right on the Deep River in Coleridge, where Bridget and I had once unsuccessfully hunted a cache placed by Nefarious Beast Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott). I once returned to that plant at Nefarious Beast Diefenbaker’s behest and replaced his missing cache. That replacement eventually went missing, and the cache was archived. So, today, I quite enjoyed returning to the location to hunt a new cache, which we did find, though it took quite a dedicated search.

Gerry and Bridget will be returning to Florida this coming week, so it was great beyond great to spend some quality time with them, which has been in too short supply since they moved. I so hope that in the coming year the pandemic will subside sufficiently to permit less distance between us when we are in close proximity. Given the positive results of this past week’s election, I feel there’s somewhat more reason to have hope on that front.

And so let us hope.

Bridget: “I’m telling you, I SAW a dreadful apparition.” Gerry: “That was just Mark.”

Rest rooms are in the back.

Haunted

I expect the trailer is haunted too.

One of us, at least, is very happy.