The Lair of a Fire-Breathing T-Rex

You better stop, hey, what’s that sound...?

Just a quick little entry after a relatively short geocaching outing this morning. Several caches down Jamestown/High Point way have been published in the past few months, and I figured it was high time I headed out to hunt at least a couple of them. The first — “Church of the Woods” (GC96CCP) — took me to a neat little wooded area behind a church, where I found a picturesque outdoor chapel and, of course, the cache. I quite enjoyed the atmosphere of serene isolation on this rather gray, soon-to-be-drizzly morning.

From there, I trucked over to a nearby neighborhood and a cache called “The Lair of a Fire-Breathing T-Rex” (GC95FVQ). The cache description reads “A million years ago this was the home of a fire-breathing T-Rex. Legend says that if you were to enter without an offering of loot you would soon be sorry....” From that and the coordinates on the map, I had a feeling what I’d be getting into — and my hunch proved correct (see the image above). My initial inspection of ground zero suggested I might up pretty wet at this one. But as it turned out, I was peering into the lair of a fire-breathing Plesiosaur. Once I shifted my focus a little, I was able to make my way to the cache without making too much a mess of myself. From the adjacent passageway, I did hear some strange rumbling, thumping sounds, so once I had signed the cache log, I headed straightaway for the Rodan Mobile.

A couple of fun caches in appealing settings on my morning run. This afternoon, there will be more home renovation happening. Hopefully, more caching tomorrow. Adieu to you, and you, and you.

The T-Rex dwells in one of these....

The Church of the Woods

Also on the church premises

The Fungus Amungus

The world’s most dejected mushroom

Fungus is fun. I’ve always found mushrooms in the wild kind of neat, but Brugger is an honest-to-god mushroom nut. She enjoys photographing them and then making watercolor & ink paintings or mixed-media images of them. These days, whenever I go out geocaching and come upon any striking examples of ye fungus, I make sure I take a few photos of them and send them along her way. This year, the late summer/early fall mushrooms have been plentiful and, in some instances, remarkable in shape, size, and color. As I have photographed these for Ms. B., I have  found myself oddly enamored of them as well.

Yesterday at Piedmont Environmental Center in Jamestown, on a caching outing with friends Old Robgso (a.k.a. Old Rob) and Ms. Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), I happened upon what was probably the hugest examples of fungus I have ever encountered. Big, big clusters around a huge tree, each cluster as big or bigger than three or four dinner plates. I know nothing of mushroom types or which ones are edible (so I eat none of them); only that they can be remarkably photogenic. I am including a few shots here. You try not to eat these. Very bad.

The Fungi From Yuggoth, perhaps?

More Yuggothians!

Happy mushrooms! No sign of dejection whatsoever.

More happy little dudes

A mini-mushroom forest

A pretty parasol!

L: There's a nose on that tree! R: Little dudes wearing floppy hats

It’s another Tequila Sunrise

Amanita is the name they call her.

Ma & Pa Shroomie with the young'uns

Treasure Island

Treasure Island... dead ahead.

Treasure Island: the name of a geocache (GCRRG5) on an island out in High Point City Lake. An old cache it is, dating back to 2005. I started caching in 2008, so the icon has been staring at me from the geocaching map ever since then. I had intended to go after it any number of times over the years, but something always came round to prevent it. But yesterday, friend Todd (a.k.a. Tbbiker) informed me he intended to rent a boat and head out to the island in search of the cache. He wondered whether I might care to join him.

Why... yes, I would.

Shipwreck!

And this time, the stars deigned to smile on us. We met at the marina this morning, rented the requisite items to reach our destination (jon boat, outboard motor, heavy-duty battery, life jackets, paddles, etc.), and off we went. Todd assumed piloting duties for the outbound trip. I took over on the way back.

Once at the island, we found a good place to dock and headed for the coordinates. Here, we discovered the  "shipwreck" described on the cache page. Given the state of the remains in 2019, I have to wonder how much of the old boat was still intact back in 2005. From here, the cache instructions told us to count off a couple of sets of paces in specific directions. However, Todd had used his GPS to do some projections, and I had settled on a search location by dead reckoning—which almost precisely matched Todd's projections. Within a short time, I spotted a suspicious-looking host at the edge of our search radius, and something told me this was where we would find our treasure. Indeed, it was.

The cache—a 50-calibre ammo can—has weathered the years well. The contents were pristine, the log in excellent condition. We spent a little time reading entries from over the years, and I rescued a travel bug that has been stuck there for the past three and half years. I shall set it on its new course soon. Once we had signed the log and rehid the container as we'd found it, we made our way back to the boat.

Neither of us had driven a motorized jon boat before. Though the learning curve was anything but steep, heading out to the island, the prop seemed disinclined to scoot us through the water at anything like high speed. However, on the return journey, for whatever reason, it recovered its wits and zipped us back in far better time.

So, Treasure Island is, at long last, marked off my to-do list. Going after it made for a satisfying, reasonably relaxing morning. And now, I've got a passel of work to do. It's gonna be a busy, busy October.

Old dudes signing Treasure Island logbook

"I'm your captain, I'm your captain... though I'm feeling mighty sick...."