At the end of my day of geocaching in Roanoke with
friend Scott this past weekend ("We Don't Need No Stinking Trails!" Saturday, August 23, 2025), my total lifetime number of geocache finds stood at 15,999. At the time,
I hadn't been paying much attention to how much the trip was adding to my
total, so I guess it was serendipitous that it provided me an opportunity to
choose a location to hunt my 16,000th geocache.
Mind you, from
Martinsville, I have to travel pretty danged far to find any caches, period,
since I've been at this for...good lard!...over eighteen years. I ended up setting
my sights on the Roanoke area again, specifically
Explore Park, southeast of the city. It's an extensive, forested area with numerous
trails and, let me tell you, lots, lots of elevation changes. The park
maps indicated that getting from one cache to another via the winding trails
oftentimes led one far, far from one's destination before heading back to
it.
As you might infer, my trek today involved a lot of
bushwhacking, so let's suffice it to say that I got my numbers, I found some
cool stuff (including a Bigfoot-themed gadget cache, although, sadly the
gadget was no longer operational), and now I'm so blinkin' tired I'm close to
falling over, much in the way that Droolie falls over.
Ah, but it's
all part of being a geocacher and reaching a new milestone. I'll take it
because if I can't hike and cache, I'll be very unhappy.
Next
milestone...17,000, and who knows how long that will take. Just hope I live to
see it.
