Take a Stalk on the Wild Side

Today, I had the pleasure of running into more fellow geocachers out on the trail than I usually see at a geocaching event. My newest geocache, “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” — GCA551P (see “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” February 21, 2023), was published early this morning, and shortly thereafter, friend Old Rob posted a DNF (Did Not Find) log. Now, Old Rob is anything but an inexperienced geocacher; in fact, many of you already know that he is one of my regular caching partners (and anyone I allow to go geocaching with me must at least be able to find his way to his own front door; so far, Old Rob has not failed at this). I thought he might have spied the cache from the ground but opted not to climb after it, since reaching it does present a moderate terrain challenge.

No; he just never saw the thing.

So, to satisfy myself that the cache had not gone missing before anyone had even hunted it, I drove out to the Osprey Trail and hoofed it out to ground zero. Sure enough, all was well with the cache. (I may have to rethink Old Rob’s geocaching qualifications.) I verified the coordinates were okay and started to head back to the Rodan Mobile when I saw a familiar figure on the trail heading for GZ. It was friend Rhodorooter (a.k.a. Dave), en route for a possible first-to-find. He checked out GZ for a while, without success, so I finally guided him to a location where he could better get an eyeball on his quarry. Once he had the location locked down, he performed the minor acrobatics necessary to procure the cache, but he very sportingly decided that, since I’d been on site and given him a substantial nudge, he would decline the first-to-find honors. After that, we headed back to our respective vehicles and bid each other adieu.

Later this afternoon, I decided to go out on another maintenance run at one of my night caches (I’ve been on a vigorous cache maintenance jag for a few weeks now) on the Laurel Bluff Trail, not too far from the Osprey. As I passed the Osprey Trailhead, I saw about eight vehicles parked along the road, a few of which I recognized as belonging to geocachers of my acquaintance. So, I pulled over, parked the car, and trucked on down the trail to see if I might catch any of this crew in the act of finding my new cache. Indeed... not far from the cache site, I saw them in the distance. So, using a certain amount of stealth, I positioned myself on a hillside above the cache, snapped a few shots of the crew at work, and texted the photos to them. This, as I suspected it might, inspired a few exclamations of surprise.

In the photo above & left, you’ll see the caching crew going about their business, blithely unaware of the mad horror-writing-geocaching fiend photographing them from afar.

So, it was my pleasure to stalk friends Night-Hawk (a.k.a. Tom), Canter Girl (a.k.a. Jeannie), Skyhawk63 (a.k.a. Tom), Punkins19 (a.k.a. Linda), and — Ha! — Old Rob (a.k.a. Old Rob) as they made their successful FTF effort. From there, all but Rob were moving on to other caches, so he and I headed back to the trailhead, and from there, I headed on to the Laurel Bluff Trail to perform any required maintenance on my night cache, “Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?” (GC9KG68). None needed to speak of. Anyway, on my way back from there, I then ran into friends MWFerrell65 and dgnc, from the NC Triangle, along the trail. We yakked for a bit, and then I made my way back to the car and Casa di Rodan.

After a long weekend doing artsy-fartsy things in Hillsborough, Ms. B. returned home this afternoon, so now the household cats have their mom to bother, rather than just dad. What a time!

Panoramic view of the host for "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" (That's not the cache on the log;
that's my coffee mug.)