A few new geocaches along the
Haw River, just north of
Burlington, came out this week, so the
Haw River Trail
looked like the perfect destination for a relatively lengthy hike today.
Sadly, of the
Socially Distant No-Dead-Weight Irregulars, only friend
Diefenbaker (a.k.a.
Scott) was available, though he did bring
his faithful cache hound
Tink with him. After ungodly amounts of water
dumping from the sky for two weeks or more, the trail
might have been a
little muddy. Tink particularly enjoyed the myriad temporary pools and ponds;
by the time we were done for the day, the Diefenbaker duo was in need of a
good scrubbing.
The morning started out foggy and chilly, but in short order, the fog broke
and the temperature rose. There are several older caches along the trail,
which I had already found but Scott had not, so we stopped for those as well
as the new. As is often the case along the Haw, the cache hunts took us to
some cool locations, including a set of massive concrete supports for a couple
of long-gone propane tanks, now overtaken by woods.
That is the kind of
stuff I love finding in the woods. Along the way, we ran into friend
tbbiker (a.k.a.
Todd) heading in the opposite direction, so we
enjoyed chatting for a spell before going our separate ways. Then — shades of
last Sunday at the
Cane Creek Mountains (see “
Rusty Wreck & Others”) — as we made our way back to our vehicles, friends
David & Diana (a.k.a.
David & Diana) came along, intent
on hitting the trail themselves.
At the end of it all, we found four caches (a handful of extras for Scott),
put in a good four miles in messy, mucky terrain, and burned a few hundred
calories. Plus I did a good deed and repaired one of friend Yoda Rob’s
caches, which needed some serious TLC.
Not at all a bad day’s effort.
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The morning started out foggy and chilly. It didn’t stay that way very
long.
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Concrete supports for old propane tanks, now swallowed by woods
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Clearly, this is an antique Confederate rocketship, all set to take off
for the moon.
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It doesn’t pay to go speeding through the woods in one of these
things!
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Scott trying not to be seen
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Tink, the very muddy cache hound
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Old Rodan and the very muddy Haw
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