“Strategies Against Architecture” and Such

“Strategies Against Architecture” is the name of a series of geocaches in the Triangle of North Carolina, where the caches are placed in or around the crumbling remains of old structures, usually in the remote woods. Several different geocachers from that area have placed caches in the series. The photo at left shows such remains — however much of them you can see. All that's left of this one is an old stone chimney, some random stones from the foundation, and a few piles of ancient refuse. This was clearly once a house, but there’s no telling how long ago it fell into ruin. The state of the remains suggests it's been many, many decades since this was a habitable dwelling. I do love discovering locations such as this, particularly when they are a bit more intact. Geocaching has taken me to many of these. Happily, we found the cache here in good condition.

It turned out to be another fine day for a gathering of Team No Dead Weight: friends Natalie (a.k.a. Fishdownthestair) and Scott (a.k.a. Diefenbaker). We chose as our primary destination the gamelands along Jordan Lake, accessed from Seaforth Road. Natalie and I had cleared a section of these gamelands a few months back, but we had left an even dozen caches out there unclaimed. All that wilderness seemed a pretty good place to hunt caches while practicing social distancing, and that, sure enough, turned out to be the case. There were a couple of others cars in the parking area, but we never saw another living soul at there. Hardly a surprise, given the relatively vast area, the rugged terrain, and the scarcity of trails. Quite a difference from some of the nearby hiking trails, where the parking areas were filled beyond overflowing, with cars lining both sides of the highways.

Too. Many. Motherfucking. People. Oy. Thanks be to Yog I am not a people.

Until today, we’ve had a mild spring, probably the mildest in a decade or more. It’s been great for getting out hiking during the pandemic, but today, the heat — right about the 90-degree mark — and excessive humidity made for some exhausting hiking. No matter; we found some excellent caches, got in plenty of exercise, and enjoyed each other’s company (from at least the requisite six feet at all times). I was pleasantly taken to see the signatures of my former next-door neighbors, Paul & Jamie, a.k.a. TravelinFarmFam, on some of the cache logs. They had apparently been out there caching on my birthday.

Happily, in the Cary/Apex area, there are still quite a few wilderness areas/gamelands/parks loaded with caches, so I hope I won’t run out of relatively nearby places to hike and hunt caches anytime soon.

Stay safe.

All that remains of the old foundation at "Strategies Against Architecture: Neglect" (GC24VTD)

This is not the cache.

Neither is this.

One of the more scenic areas we found on our excursion into the gamelands

And another.

Left: dinosaur bones? Right: We never found a trail until we were on our way back to the cars.

Another Haw River Hoedown

A handful of The Usual Suspects — Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), and an old dude (a.k.a. an old dude) — badly needed to hike and seek some geocaches today. So off we rode to the Haw River down near Pittsboro. We've cached that area numerous times, though just north of US 64, there is a trail along the river with a number of nice caches we had yet to conquer. That we did, but for one very old cache "Craggy Haw" GC1JCRP, placed in 2008), which is most likley missing. Otherwise, the hike proved scenic, occasionally rugged, and altogether satisfying.

I wonder what might be lurking in that big old
column of stone way back in the woods....

After the river hike, we landed ourselves at Carolina Brewery in Pittsboro where, unbeknownst to us, a gaggle of local geocachers had also landed following a nearby CITO (Cache-In, Trash-Out) event. We arrived right at the tail end of the event, but we did see quite a few familiar faces (and in a few cases, entire bodies). We exchanged a round of greetings before most of them departed and then proceeded to procure ourselves some vittles and liquid refreshment. Nice!

On the way home, we stopped for another handful of caches. And we got run off from a stand of woods where a cache apparently used to be but that now belongs to some nearby property owners who were unaware of such wondrous things as geocaches. Alas.

All in all, though, a satisfying day of exercise, good company, and decent refreshment.

Islands in the stream

A sunny day at the river

Swarming Through Moncure

Team 3Acrobats — Old Man Rodan, BigG7777, and Suntigres

Suntigres (a.k.a. Bridget), BigG7777 (a.k.a. Gerry), and Old Man Rodan made a fine day of geocaching in and around the towns of Pittsboro and Moncure, mostly targeting a bunch of little rubber bees from a series called "The Swarm," which comprises hundreds of caches over several counties in central and eastern NC. We started at UP! (GC20985), a wonderful cache up a grain silo just this side of Pittsboro. Suntigres and I had already found it several years ago, but since Mr. G. still needed it, we stopped at the location so he could perform the requisite daredevil acts. He did so readily, and since all of us could now claim UP! as a find, we settled on 3Acrobats as our team moniker for the day.

BigG goes UP!

Among the day's highlights was a multi-cache that took us to a little graveyard outside Moncure and a micro inside a crumbling old building that damn near forced us to live up to our team name (again), as we struggled to avoid falling through holes in floors, descended and then ascended partially collapsed stairs, and clambered and crawled through a dark cellar littered with lord knows what kind of pointy detritus; and a cache underneath an ancient concrete bridge over US Hwy 1. The cache container there, sadly, appears to have gone missing, though we did enjoy exploring the bridge's dark underbelly. Instead of a cache, we did find a partially eaten can of ravioli, which we offered to Suntigres to assuage her munchies, though she inexplicably declined our good-hearted gesture.

At the end of the day, I had added 27 caches to my total, which now stands at 9,903. I suppose it's time to start thinking about a specific, challenging cache to go after for find #10,000. I'm thinking something that requires a kayak and isn't far away from a decent winery.

 Cache on.

Inside and out

"He fell through a hole in the floor!"

Suntigres at the bridge

Getting the Boot

Team Two and a Half Men

Actually, we only got part of the boot. The geoart you see in the photo is in Wake County, NC, along the American Tobacco Trail. To get the coordinates for each individual cache in the boot print pattern, you must answer a question on the cache listing page about Wake County Parks. Once done, you hike out the trail to claim the caches. There are 40 caches in the pattern, and today, Rob "Robgso," Debbie "Cupdaisy," and Old Man Rodan headed out after a bunch of them. We picked up a dozen in the series, as well as a fair number of other caches along the trail. It was another damn near 80-degree day in October, so we got pretty warm out there, but at the end of it all, we'd put in about six miles, with numerous side trips and some backtracking (thanks to old people leaving their hiking sticks behind); logged 18 caches; and found things like jewel-shelled turtles, giant spiders, horses in pine trees, and pigs in lamp posts.

Most notably, on our journey, we engaged ourselves in a spirited discourse about whether a hissy fit or a conniption ranks higher in the hierarchy of tantrums. We fairly readily came to the conclusion that the conniption is certainly of higher caliber than the mere hissy fit, and our results were confirmed by a Google search, which indicated the question was actually settled about nine years ago. Well, sometimes there's something to be said for reinventing the wheel.

Our final destination before returning home was Carolina Brewery in Pittsboro, where we procured satisfying vittles and liquid refreshment. While I was driving us back, I told Rob that if I fell asleep to wake me up when we got home. Happily, he did this thing.

Big.

A very old tobacco barn out in the woods, not far off the trail

Sparkly sea turtle in the woods

L: Cupdaisy finds a butterfly; R: a long stretch of the American Tobacco Trail

Little bacons in a lightpole

Beating the Devil and Haw, Haw, Haw

Old Rodan at the Devil's Tramping Ground

Any weekend is a good weekend for geocaching, and on this one, the caching was good indeed. Lots of high-quality hides — from Siler City to Sanford to Pittsboro, from underground to far higher than folks rightfully ought to put their feet. Saturday, Bridget "Suntigres" Langley and I got together and headed south toward the Devil's Tramping Ground, not far from Siler City. Several years ago, I had gone there in what proved a vain attempt to make the cache there my 2,000th find, and again the following year to hunt a most excellent night cache ("Hell on Earth," GC1GZNP). My target, "Devil's Caching Ground" (GC1GKYR), missing when I had previously hunted it, had been replaced, and yesterday's hunt proved successful, making it find #6,499. Thanks to some ornery briers, I managed to shed some blood at Tramping Ground, so there's no telling what evil may result. Beware. After that, we targeted several other well-conceived hides, such as "True Love Always" (GC3CEMX), a very engaging multi, and "Sanford's RbC" (GC2BM3B), which allowed me to enjoy some deep, deep shade on a ridiculously warm December day.

No sleeping in this morning. Up before dawn to meet Rob "Robgso" Isenhour to head over to the Haw River, near Pittsboro, where we joined a group of about 18 folks for a hike along the rather rugged, exceedingly scenic river trail. Rob and I had gone caching there several months ago, along with Shoffner (a.k.a. Cupdaisy) but had been unable to find four out of ten bison tube hides along the trail. This time, with all those eyes and tactile appendages, we were able to find those and make a clean run of the series. The Haw River in this area is wide and very rocky, the west side oftentimes very steep and strewn with giant boulders. The climbing is strenuous, but the views are often spectacular.

One of the caches we visited involved walking across a narrow dam for fifty or sixty feet to reach an old pump house. Audra "Homestyle" Webb and her son, Zachary, were frothing at the mouth to undertake this particular terrain challenge, so off they went, accompanied by Lonnie "MBD" Drain for moral support. It took a bit of time, but they finally managed to find the cache, and they made the crossing both ways without ending up as fish food. Good for them, bad for the fish. Sorry, fish.

The hunt for what turned out to be my favorite cache of the day — "TowerLand" (GC235TA) — took us to an old fire tower just outside Pittsboro. Posting here that the cache is somewhere on the tower spoils nothing, as the cache page itself gives you a fair idea of the sort of challenge you face. The tower has clearly stood there for many, many years, and it's seen better days. Just getting to the level where we might begin our ascent in earnest required some serious effort, and a few of our number inadvertently provided some entertaining acrobatics both coming and going. After finding the cache, some of the crew continued all the way to the top; I opted to forgo this particular pleasure, mainly because, every now and then, MBD would give the tower a good shake, and I was never quite certain the whole construct wasn't going to come crashing down. At any rate, it was on our party's descent that the real entertainment began. A couple of the climbers, whom I will call Karen "e-bird67" Grigg and young Homekid, absolutely could not find their way off the tower. Coaching, coaxing, cajoling, pleading, and threatening proved ultimately useless. These poor souls may yet be up there, soon to become mere skeletons swaying in the breeze to warn others from undertaking such frightfully energetic adventures.

Do beware, and have a happy and safe holiday season.

Click images to enlarge.

"Mom! Uncle Rob is getting high!"

Can Audra be trapped in this prison drain forever? Let's hope not!

L: Audra and Lonnie make their way across the dam to find the cache. R: Rocking the tower!

Smile!