It was a fine weekend for hiking and geocaching, and I put in more mileage, in
rugged terrain, than I have in many moons. On my way to Martinsville on Friday
afternoon, I detoured to the
Knight Brown Preserve, near
Belews Lake in
Rockingham County, to hunt a cache that’s been awaiting my
attention for months now. That hike was about a 3-mile round trip, and though
the terrain is not particularly rugged, it presents the hiker with lots of
elevation changes. Steep elevation changes. Speaking of elevation changes at
the cache coordinates, there was a massive fallen tree over a gully, which
offered a splendid vantage point from which to survey one’s kingdom. Always
one to appreciate a physical challenge, I was hoping the cache might be up in
its branches somewhere, but previous posted logs insinuated that it was not.
Never you mind, I decided to go up in that tree anyhow, for we must get our
jollies as we can. It was from that vantage point that I noticed the cache,
just a few feet away, at a much lower elevation. I would have preferred to
have to climb for it, but hey... I found it and signed the log so I could
claim it.
And I got my jollies in the big tree. That’s a good day.
Once settled at Pleasant Hill for the evening, I ordered some chicken tenders
from
Coach’s Neighborhood Grill via
Doordash, and after the afternoon’s hike, the dead bird hit the spot. I put on
This Island Earth for the evening’s
entertainment, but I ended up dozing through a portion of it. It’s one of
those science-fiction movies from childhood that have stood out in mind for
all these years. I’ve watched it a handful of times in the intervening years,
but I kind of hate that I missed part of it this time around. I can always
watch it again, at least as long as it’s on
YouTube. The print excellent — the best I’ve seen of it.
One of the things I adore about Pleasant Hill is the minimal light pollution
at night. From the hilltop on which the house rests, the view of the sky is
often spectacular. Friday night was very cold but clear, and I spent a little
while outside enjoying the view. Even with my phone camera, I got a few
decent shots of the constellation Orion.
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| “Orion, won’t you give me your star sign.” |
On Saturday morning, I drove up to
Rocky Mount,
VA, hoping to claim a
recently placed cache and a much older multi (which has been out there since
before I started geocaching in 2008) called
Grassy Hill Ridge
(
GCQXD4). The new one was a quick and easy find at a signpost; Grassy Hill Ridge is
one that, a few years back, friend
Natalie (a.k.a.
Ms.
Fishdownthestairs) and I had sought, but the first stage was
missing, so we hadn’t been able to go on with the hunt. Reaching this cache requires a
roughly three-mile hike up and down a rugged mountainside. For most of that
hike, the ascent was steady, on a reasonably well-worn trail. However, the last few hundred feet required negotiating a very steep, rocky incline
that tested the limits of my stamina. I took even more care than usual in
rough terrain, since I was out there alone, a long way from help. I
really did not want to fall and bust something worse than my pride.
Happily, I made the find and returned to civilization with all parts
intact. Aching, but intact.
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Grassy Hill Ridge. Not much grass, but lots of rocks. The cache lurks
way up at the top of the ridge—
several hundred feet above where
I’m standing to take this photo.
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Looking down from GZ, with the cache in the foreground. It’s a long,
long way down!
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After the hike and a late, ungodly overpriced lunch from
Dairy Queen, I buzzed back to Greensboro. Ms. B. and I are back watching
Game of Thrones from the beginning, so we
spent most of the rest of the evening in front of the television, covered with
cats.
Sunday, my traditional geocaching day, usually with the
No-Dead-Weight Irregulars, was indeed a caching day, but with only friend
Scott (a.k.a.
Diefenbaker), as none of the rest of the
gang was available. And it was another day of hiking rugged terrain, this time in the
Uwharrie Mountains. We planned to meet at the
Eldorado Outpost, but I had stopped for a cache on my way there, and Scott happened to see my
car as he was passing by. We grabbed that cache and then headed to the trading post. From there, we headed deeper into the
forest. We put in a good five miles of hiking in moderate to tough terrain,
claimed a slew of caches, and returned to the outpost, where we enjoyed a very
good, far more reasonably priced lunch than I’d had at Dairy Queen the
previous day.
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Old Rodan at “Poser Rock”
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Guardrails along the woodland trail. Don’t see that every day.
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A couple of tired old farts
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Today, Monday, is
Presidents Day, but since I’m no longer forced to
operate on a company schedule, remembering such days doesn’t come so readily.
Ms. B. is off work, though, so she is a woman of leisure today (although she did
do a spot of housecleaning this morning, which was good, since the cleaning
needed to be done, and it was most definitely her turn... haha). I was all set
to finish up this blog and dive into continuing work on
Georgia: The Haunting of Tate’s Mill, but right about the time I settled into my office chair, I received email
notifications that a couple of new caches had just been published. These were
over in Graham, on the
Long Meadow section of the
Haw River Trail. Figuring I might be able to snag the first-to-find honors (which really
aren’t a significant honor), I bolted out the door and drove out to the trail.
Happily, I was able to find both caches — and, sure enough, I found them first.
So, the old sore feet got an additional reason to be sore, though this hike
(about 2.5 miles) was not rugged at all. But it was fun. And I got
first-to-find.
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Passing under Interstate 40/85 on the Haw River Trail
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Ground Zero: the cache is there... somewhere.
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