Halloween Is in the Air

Yesterday, I trucked out to Fieldale, a few miles northwest of Martinsville, to set up some new geocaches — an Adventure Lab with five stages, and two physical caches — which afforded me a fair amount of trail hiking. The woods are just starting to look like fall, with a smidgen of color, which I expect will mature a bit by the end of the week.

The Fieldale Smith River Trail is my favorite local hiking spot, as it runs along the scenic Smith River for several miles, and there's lots of interesting terrain on either side. Several of my geocaches lurk out there, so after double-checking the coordinates and clues on my new ones, I took the opportunity to hike out to check on my older ones as well. Happily, all were fine. The best thing about the Fieldale trail is that it passes the old Koehler warehouse, known to me and those in the know as "The Spooky Place," which at one time doubled as the local Halloween haunted castle.

Today, to help establish the proper mood, while I was hiking, I put on my Amazon Music Halloween music playlist. This did the trick; Halloween is now officially in my blood for the season.

On the way home, I noticed that the local First Baptist Church was selling pumpkins, and since their pumpkin patch looked reasonably sincere (probably the best we'll get around here), I stopped in and purchased a couple of nice pumpkins. The Jack o' Lantern I've had out front for almost a couple of weeks is starting to look like a toothless old man, so the replacements are timely.

I hope your Halloween season is looking as awesomely grim as ours is.

A couple of the nearby haunted islands viewed from the Fieldale Smith River Trail

The Smith River, a Haunted Island, and the Spooky Place

Almost every day, I walk somewhere between three and four miles around our neighborhood, which has done wonders for my physical and mental health. This afternoon, Ms. B. and I decided to go walking out on the Fieldale-Smith River Trail, which is my favorite of the trails in this area. In 2009 and 2010, I loaded up a mile-plus length of the trail with geocaches, and they're all still active. Yesterday, in fact, a group of geocachers found them all. Just for good measure, I decided to give each of the caches a physical check-up, and I was pleased to find them in decent condition. One of them (called "Haunted Island") involves a little tree climbing, and since that's one of my favorite physical activities, up I went (the view in the photo to the left is actually from up in the tree). I even managed to get back down.

My favorite of the trail's attractions is the view of the old Koehler Warehouse across the river on Route 57, which I've always called "The Spooky Place" because it was the site of the Martinsville Jaycees' infamous Halloween Haunted Castle when I was a teenager and a bit beyond. For a couple of tales of my sordid adventures in the Haunted Castle, you may visit my article at the Horror Writers Association Blog here. Don't be afeared... much.

A view of the Spooky Place without the spooky people in the way

A view of the Smith River from the trail

Tree damage!

A happy little community of mushrooms Ms. B. discovered

From the Spooky Place to the Haunted Island

I was in Martinsville this weekend, and I needed to perform maintenance on a few of my geocaches in the area, a couple of which lurk along the Fieldale Smith River Trail, just outside of town in Henry County. It’s probably my favorite trail anywhere, for it offers a scenic walk along the Smith River, in terrain that isn’t very difficult (unless one leaves the trail to hunt my geocaches). Walking south from either of its trailheads, one will eventually see, across the river, the hulking, ancient shape of the old Koehler warehouse, which, since childhood, I have called “The Spooky Place.” In my early teens and for some years beyond, for Halloween, the warehouse served as the setting for the local Jaycees’ haunted castle. I had a significant hand in that chapter of local history (the highlights of which you may read in the Horror Writers Association Halloween Haunts Blog), and it rates among my most prized memories.

This morning, I set out bright and early on the trail carrying my bag of geocaching supplies. After a while, even from a fair distance away, I could see the smokestack of the old monstrosity rising above the trees along the riverbanks. As I drew nearer, the bare winter trees offered me a relatively clear view of the building across the river. It’s been a few years since I’ve hiked out here, so I snapped a fair number of photographs, a couple of which I’m posting here.

My primary target was a cache called “Haunted Island,” a short distance farther down the trail from the Spooky Place. It does indeed reside on an island — which typically isn’t very hard to access unless the water is running high. Since we’ve had a lot of rain, the water level was pretty high, but my waterproof boots kept my feet dry. If you’re hunting my cache, it’s when you’re on the island that your terrain challenge begins, for the cache may be found some distance above your head. Your difficulty retrieving it largely depends on your vertical stature and upper body strength.

And how a cache in such a location goes missing is a perpetual mystery (if you zoom in on the proper spot, you can see the cache in the photo at left; note that it is tiny). Still, on occasion, go missing it does, so this morning, I performed the necessary acrobatics to put a new container in place. It’s back in play, and I’ll thank Mother Nature and nosy (and/or inordinately agile) muggles to leave the damned thing be, at least for a while.

After “Haunted Island,” I headed over to another of my caches called “Cachefishing,” which also resides above your head, though this one can be retrieved without any extraordinary acrobatics. I was somewhat dismayed to find that, in the recent past, a huge, fallen tree all but obliterated the cache’s hiding place. I expected to find this cache container missing as well, but — much to my surprise — it was still there and in good condition. Happily, it only took a small amount of adjustment to reset it, and it may now be retrieved as I originally intended it.

So, that’s another round of cache maintenance completed. Ordinarily, I find repairing and replacing caches one of the least satisfying aspects of geocaching, but in cases like this, it was downright fun. Not that I want to have to do it again right away.

Cache on.

The half-obliterated setting for "Cachefishing." Do you see the cache's hiding place?

Another view of "The Spooky Place"

Haunted, Hurting, and Happy

Oh, my achy-breaky knees. I have surely put in some hiking this past couple of weeks, and the old bones are feeling it. I suppose it's a good kind of ache, except that it's not; oh yes, it means I've been getting back to some pretty serious cardio and overall muscle workouts, but unfortunately, I have the feeling the occasional ache in the knee is more arthritis than exercise related. Still, I'm more than happy to be hiking many miles, climbing trees, adding to my geocache count, all that good stuff. I also had to do some maintenance on several of my own caches the past couple of days, which involved additional hiking and tree climbing. Such suffering!

Now, the caching did take me to some scenic, creepy, and otherwise pleasing locations this week, such as the back roads of Guilford County; Farris Park, near Mayodan, NC; and one of my mostest favoritest trails ever, the Fieldale-Smith River Trail in Henry County, VA. I tell you this, heading out to on the latter trail to replace the log in my cache, "Haunted Island" (GC1P9Z3) — yes, it is on an island, and it is haunted — the wind was a-howling, the trees a-creaking and a-groaning, kind of like my old bones. And from the trail, you get a good view of the old Koehler Warehouse, which served as the area Jaycees' Halloween haunted castle back in the 70s. In my late teens, I had the pleasure of helping the Jaycees out, playing a mad vivisectionist (using real organs from a butcher shop) and skulking around the dark corridors in a monster costume scaring the hell out of the patrons. Ah, the good old days when you could touch, grab, tickle, and otherwise startle folks without worrying about lawsuits. To this day, I think of the old warehouse as "The Spooky Place." It really kind of is....

I did spend the past couple of days helping my mom out, so it was hardly all fun and games, but the time was pleasant enough. Today, back home, but unfortunately, Ms. Brugger is down with a flu bug. She needed some provisions, and while I don't love her enough to go to Walmart for them, I do love her enough to travel miles out of the way to get them at a non-Walmart. And though I almost never drink beer anymore, I noticed that strange brew called Oculto you see in the photo above, and I figured I might as well try it. Nothing to brag about, for sure, though it blends well enough with bloody mary mix (in this case, Clamato juice and scorpion pepper sauce). Now and again, a good old red-eye hits the spot.

Cute little cache guardian I discovered in the woods in Greensboro

Thought I might buy this little fixer-upper out in Guilford County for Ms. Brugger
as a summer cottage. Cozy, wot?

Purty view at Farris Park, near Mayodan, NC

The Spooky Place, in Koehler, VA