Midland or (Damn Near) Bust!

Our typical view forward (from a standstill) for a disgusting percentage of our 750-mile drive to Michigan

Thursday, August 3–Friday, August 4
Kimberly B.’s cousins in Michigan had planned a family reunion for this weekend, and so we decided some time ago that we would attend. With flights being crazy expensive, we opted to drive, as we have several times in the past. What we hadn’t done was drive to Michigan at the height of highway construction season. Our plan was similar to our previous road trips here: leave home and head to Ripley, WV; stay the night at the handy-dandy Super 8 Motel there; and then drive the rest of the way the following day. Ordinarily, this makes for a 12- to 14-hour trip, including occasional stops. Thanks to countless construction holdups, the inevitable accidents, and miles-long traffic jams courtesy of too many motherfucking people, we ended up with a damn near 18-hour drive.

Bloody exhausting. At least I managed to find a handful of decent geocaches along the way, and we listened to an audiobook (Casino Royale) and some fun 70s and 80s music to mitigate the frustration. It rained most of the way on Thursday, but at least it wasn’t blinding. Friday’s drive felt like the endless traffic jam from hell since we easily spent as much time crawling (or motionless) as we did moving at a clip. After a particularly egregious delay just north of Ann Arbor, Brugger suggested we stop at a nearby Mexican Restaurant and have an early dinner (along with a margarita for good measure). That was just enough to help us mellow out, and, finally, we made that last couple of hours to her folks’ place in Midland without undue delay.

Saturday, August 5
The family reunion was to kick off at noon, so at 11:30 a.m., Kimberly, Del, Fern, and I set out for the backcountry around Loomis, MI, about a half hour from Midland. I’d met only a couple of her cousins before, so for me, this was mostly a gathering of strangers, but the decent food and company made for a relaxing enough event.

This date is my dear, late friend “Old Rob” Isenhour’s birthday, so a while back, friend Scott (a.k.a. Diefenbaker) and I organized a geocaching event to be held today to commemorate his life and myriad contributions to our geocaching community. At the time, I didn’t recall our commitment to Ms. B’s family reunion. So, since I couldn’t attend Rob’s birthday event in person, Scott arranged for me to pipe in with a video call at 2:00 p.m. As the reunion drew to a close, I hoofed it down the long dirt road to a find nearby geocache, and at ground zero, I attempted to make the call. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t go through. Fortunately, once we got back to Casa di Brugger, the call worked, so Ms. B. and I were able to virtually attend the event for a time. It turned out to be the biggest gathering of local geocachers in years, featuring many old-timers who haven’t been active in years. That warmed my old heart since Rob had been such a noteworthy figure, both in my life and in our community.

Old Rodan on the hunt

A right purty view from GZ

For the evening, Ms. B.’s longtime friend, Linda, formerly of Midland, and her daughter, Hayley, who were visiting from Illinois, joined us for drinks and dinner at Whichcraft, a nice downtown establishment featuring Michigan-made spirits of all varieties. As it turned out, this was also the weekend for Midland’s annual River Days celebration, which drew a sizable crowd downtown. Happily, we managed to find easy parking, relatively mellow surroundings, and more refreshments at nearby Grape Beginnings, a fine local winery/wine bar that Brugger and I make a point to visit whenever we’re here. Linda and Hayley proved excellent company, and we ended up closing down the wine bar. Toward the end of the evening, we bore witness to what I would call the most spectacular fireworks display I’ve ever experienced. For a full half-hour, the myriad explosions lit the sky without even a few seconds pause. Apparently, River Days provides quite the blast here in Midland.

Sunday, August 6
I haven’t been a churchgoing soul for many years, but Del & Fern invited Kimberly and me to join them for the morning service at Midland Nazarene, and so... off to church we went. Theirs is what I would call a “modern” kind of service, with a band, contemporary music, and prerecorded video messages (which I found ironic since these focused on building personal connections) in addition to traditional churchy things. In the end, to quote the infamous Dr. Franklin Ruehl, it was better than being slapped in the belly with a wet trout. How about that?

The weather was drizzly and dreary all day, but Kimberly and I ventured out to grab lunch for the family from KFC, followed by a second outing to a downtown knick-knack shop she likes and then Live Oak Coffeehouse for some hot (or in her case, cold) refreshment. I stopped to hunt a nearby cache, but by all indications, the bloody thing was missing. It rained real water on me.

As is our custom when we don’t have other plans, Ms. B. and I spent the evening relaxing with the folks, mostly watching various TV shows in the family room. This was also better than the wet trout treatment.

Monday, August 7
This evening’s plan was for me to make dinner — meatloaf, at Del & Fern’s request — which meant I needed to go shopping at Meijer. However, I couldn’t bring myself to go shopping at Meijer without first going geocaching. So, I set out on this somewhat dreary morning (which, happily, turned undreary within an hour or so) to hunt some of the local hides I hadn’t yet found. I had mixed success. A couple of very tough ones eluded me (both of which I’ve hunted before; they eluded me then, too); several others I found without difficulty. All this amounted to about three miles of hoofing it on a comfortable morning, so I’m a happy cacher. Then I went to Meijer and picked up the dinner stuff (and some sushi for lunch, which was pretty awful; I should have known better than to buy Meijer sushi).

During the afternoon, I received the preliminary print file for Deathrealm: Spirits from Shortwave Publishing, so I spent a good while proofing it. I got pretty far with it, but soon it came time to prepare the evening dinner. It turned out danged good. Then... oy...! Migraine! Sure enough, it’s that time of year, when the weather begins to shift toward the next season. Today’s drop in temperature and low pressure no doubt triggered the damned thing. So, the evening turned out less comfortable than I’d hoped, but at least the headache wasn’t as severe as many that I’ve had in the past.

Much to our dismay, word from our housesitter is that Kim’s kitty, Ralph, who suffered congestive heart failure some time ago, isn’t doing very well. With the meds he’s been taking, he’s enjoyed almost normal health, but at this point, he may just be running out of time. Very, very sad. In any event, we’ll probably be leaving Michigan a day earlier than we had intended.

Tuesday, August 8
Our housesitter gave us a somewhat reassuring report this morning, but I think we’re still going to head home a day early. There’s nothing we can really do from here anyway, so we’ll have to enjoy our remaining time as best we can. Thus, after breakfast, I set my sights on the nearby community of Sanford, where a goodly number of caches awaited my attention. One of them was at a neat little covered bridge at the Sanford Centennial Museum, a cache I had hunted before — as my attempted 14,000th find — but it turned out to be missing at the time. It has since been replaced, so this morning, I was finally able to stake my claim. I also went after a trio of Adventure Lab caches, two of which were at the museum; I hiked and hunted along the Pere Marquette Rail Trail for a couple of miles; and I found caches at a couple of neat old graveyards. Once done, I put in three miles of hiking and logged a total of 26 caches. Not too shabby.

Once back at Casa di Brugger, I did a little updating on this blog and continued proofing the Deathrealm: Spirits dummy. For dinner, Ms. B. and I headed to d’Alessandro’s Italian Restaurant, which we’ve enjoyed several times on past visits. And again, very pleasant tonight. Manicotti with Bolognese sauce for Ms. B. and Angel Hair with Bolognese per me. We accompanied this with a delicious Bocelli Sangiovese. Until this, I never realized the great Andrea Bocelli came from a winemaking family. I approve of both his voice and his spirits.

From this morning — a few of the sights around Sanford:

Wednesday, August 9
I set out bright and early this morning on yet another geocaching quest, this time bound for Freeland, a little community a few miles southeast of Midland. I had picked up a handful of Freeland caches in years past, but today I managed to put a pretty good dent in the total. A couple of graveyard caches had caught my eye — both of which I had previously visited on hunts for older caches. Sadly, I had not been successful on those hunts because the caches were missing, and, even more sadly, I had no better luck today — and I’m pretty sure it’s because these newer hides, too, have gone missing. Still, I had a mighty fine time, and I added another 14 to my total find count, which now stands at 14,420.

Kimberly and her parents went antiquing, and it turned out they, too, ended up in Freeland after a run to Saginaw. I had already arrived back home before they hit Freeland, though, so our paths would not have crossed. I could have accompanied them and done some caching in Saginaw as well as Freeland, but I figured I’d still end up in some antique stores, and I didn’t really have that kind of spirit in me today.

For dinner, we opted for Japanese, at Fuji Sushi, which we’ve enjoyed on previous occasions. Now, I understand it’s all economics, but I sure miss the days of sushi restaurants serving a wide variety of fish and seafood on their sushi plates. Like most nowadays, Fuji gives you two pieces of a select few varieties, instead of a single piece of numerous varieties. I prefer the latter. That said, the selections were delicious, and I found the salmon skin handroll quite heavenly.

For our final evening of this Midland trip, we enjoyed the usual family gathering in the family room with game shows and cooking shows providing the entertainment.

This trip has not been without some unusual stressors. Our kitty Ralph isn’t doing well. We had a bit of a scare that we might have expensive appliance issues back home, but I think the issue has been resolved, hopefully for the long haul. We’re very close to getting our Greensboro house sold, but some of the scheduling on the last legs of the journey has proven problematic. I’m sure it’ll get sorted out. But sometimes, I tend to be the nervous sort. And Ms. B. has been more than typically stressed out.

From this morning — a few of the sights around Freeland:

On the hunt in Pine Grove Cemetery

Pick a hole. Any hole.

A little covered footbridge at Memorial Park

A lovely day at West Side Cemetery

Thursday, August 10
I realized yesterday that I had left my hiking stick near a cache the other day, and so, figuring it would probably still be there, I went out there this morning — and yes, there it was. So it was nice to recover that stick. Old Rob gave me that stick many years ago, and so it carries with it a little more meaning than just any old hiking pole. Anyhoo, since I was out, I headed after a handful of nearby caches, including one in the deep, dark underground, which is one of my favorite types of hides.

So, soon, it will be time to pack, and off we shall go. I just hope our drive home is less of a pain in the ass than the drive up here.

Heading in...

The cache

Evil Dr. Evil

In this case, “Dr. Evil” refers to a series of “extreme” geocaches, placed by a handful of local geocachers, deep in the subterranean labyrinths of numerous North Carolina cities and towns. Some of these hides are more difficult (read “potentially deadly”) than others, but all offer physical (and sometimes mental) challenges to geocachers who appreciate venturing into deep, dark underground culverts and catacombs to claim their smileys. I’ve found a fair number of “Dr. Evil” hides, and so far I’ve made it home in one piece (though inevitably filthy dirty).

Yesterday, the No-Dead-Weight Irregulars — Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), Fishdownthestairs (a.k.a. Natalie), Old Rob (a.k.a. Old Rob), and Old Rodan (a.k.a. me) — decided to try our luck at “Dr. Evil Visits Sanford,” a relatively old cache (placed in 2010) by the late, lamented Moncure Bee Dude (a.k.a. Lonnie, may he rest in peace). No one had found it in something like six years, so we figured it was time someone made the attempt. As with many in this series of hides, the online cache page offered only minimal information about the cache and the challenges awaiting intrepid hunters. The first test was finding access to the underground route, since no starting coordinates were given.

A thorough study of the Google Maps aerial view of the location clued us into a likely starting point, and once we arrived there, we appeared to have hit the jackpot. Maybe too much of a jackpot, as we found not one but three culverts that led in roughly the right direction. A brief incursion into each dark maw convinced us that the middle of the three was our most likely suspect. Now, let it be known that Old Rob does not do tunnels. He is not a tunnel rat. He offered to spot us from above, as best as the series of manholes and drains on the surface allowed. So, we three brave (read “possibly insane”) members of the crew hunkered down and began a long, uncomfortable duckwalk into the pipe, from which a prodigious stream of water poured with unbridled enthusiasm.

After some distance, the concrete tubes changed to corrugated metal — and the diameter of the passage decreased by a good ten percent. The water made the metal surface very slippery, making forward progress even more difficult. Eventually, we heard Rob calling to us from a drain opening above, indicating we’d gone a couple of hundred feet. We now came to a series of brick-lined shafts that led up to manholes on the surface (the iron-rung ladders in these are frequently used to hang cache containers, but we had some distance to go before we reached ground zero). Almost 400 feet in, we heard Rob calling that he was standing above our heads at the posted cache coordinates — but there was no manhole there. We found this odd, but — sure enough — not far away, we saw another vertical shaft, where we assumed (and hoped) we would find our quarry.

It didn’t take long to determine why there was no manhole at ground zero — the vertical shaft had been blocked with concrete.

[Insert lots of heavy sighing here.]

By all indications, the cache no longer existed. We assumed that at some point during the past six years, for whatever reason, the shaft had been sealed. And so, we retreated in defeat, soaked with both water and sweat, covered with all kinds of muckity-muck, and just about tuckered out from the long, difficult duckwalk-slash-crawl. And that might have been the end of the story but for a note we received from a geocacher who had found this particular Dr. Evil back in 2010. He insinuated the posted ground zero might not be entirely accurate because, when he found the cache, the newer concrete and metal pipes gave way to old brick-lined tunnels — and there was actually a memorial plaque on the wall where the cache resided. The indication here is that we may simply have not gone far enough... if his description of the setting still applies after so many years.

Anyway. I don’t know whether I will ever return to this particular Dr. Evil hide in hopes we might find it by proceeding some unknown distance farther in the tunnel. From where we ended up, the corrugated metal tunnel continued as far as our lights could shine, and I’m not sure this old body is as up to so taxing a physical challenge as it used to be. In fact, these days, I’m more of a mind that if the tunnel is too small to stand in, it’s probably too small for Mark.

I shan’t worry too much, though; there are still a lot of taller tunnels out there with caches in them. Maybe even another Dr. Evil.

This morning, I went out and found a new, much easier cache (a first-to-find, at that), with friends Diefenbaker and Night-Nawk (a.k.a. Tom), and then I placed a new one of my own, this one called “The Spider.” It’s a little mean but nowhere near as evil as a Dr. Evil. Still, I’m betting that a few hunters will bitterly curse my name.

[Insert evil laughter here.]

The No-Dead-Weight Irregulars (Old Rodan, Old Rob, Old Diefenbaker, Relatively Young Fishdownthestairs)
relaxing after the Dr. Evil experience

Monsters in Midland, The Bathroom Bomber Flight, & More

Saturday, January 18, 2020
Okay, so maybe the monsters is us. Brugger and me, that is. Since she and I have celebrated Christmas down south every year that we've been together, it has become tradition to have a late holiday celebration with her folks in Michigan in January. So, early this morning, we set out for Midland via United Airlines, by way of Chicago and then Flint. (No, we did not drink the water.) Coffee. I drank coffee. I will say the coffee on our United flight was somewhat superior to the coffee I've had on Delta, which has typically been our Michigan-bound airline, and shit tons better than the coffee on American and British Airways, which carried us back and forth on our relatively recent European outing. And United gave us Star Wars napkins. You seriously can't go wrong when you've got Star Wars napkins.

To my surprise — because I had not looked in advance — there is a virtual geocache inside Chicago's O'Hare Airport. It lay no more than half a mile from our gate, and since we had about a 30-minute layover, I figured I could hoof it to GZ, claim the virtual, and get back before our nice little Canadair CRJ550 left without me. Happily, I made it to the cache and back with almost fifteen minutes to spare. And so, I added another Illinois cache to my tally to start the day right. Ms. B. and I are hoping to visit Chicago and see a bunch of my old friends sometime later this year. I'm sure I'll get a few more Illinois caches under my belt then.

Del & Fern met us in Flint, and from there we drove the hour or so to Casa di Brugger in Midland. Also tradition is for Fern to prepare for us her famous kielbasa-vegetable soup and patented sandwich spread, which filled us up all nice and proper. We made the rest of the afternoon and evening pretty mellow. A shopping trip for provisions, and then a relaxing evening in the downstairs den with wine and TV.

Ms. B. and Old Dude, frigid at the Tridge

Old Rodan geocaching with an odd couple

Sunday, January 19, 2020
Some of us got up pretty early; had a decent breakfast, with nonstop coffee; and spent a good portion of the day working on his latest Ameri-Scares novel, which is coming into the final stretch. Somebody else (ahem... Kimberly) might have slept in very late. Later, Del brought us in a fine feast from China Palace. Then, Ms. B. and I headed out to do some geocaching in the snow. My main target was a relatively new virtual called "The Tridge" (GC88Z72) at....the Tridge, a three-span footbridge over the Tittabawassee and Chippewa rivers in downtown Midland. Why, yes, it was freezing cold out there. They grow the snow deep here. Yeppers, when I was an old dude, I used to go geocaching in the snow... uphill, both ways... with no shoes....

I picked up a few other park & grab caches, and tried for a couple of "non-winter-friendly" caches — which generally means they're on the ground and liable to be covered with snow. Indeed, the "non-winter-friendly" label applied in no uncertain terms.

From there, we fit in a bit of necessary shopping and went for coffee at a nice little shop near downtown called Live Oak. Ms. B. loved the Vanilla Latte, and I had a very good Chai. Back at Casa di Brugger, we scavenged dinner for ourselves and once again spent a mellow evening at home with the folks. Nice.

Enjoying hot drinks at Live Oak Coffee Shop after some mighty cold geocaching

Monday, January 20, 2020
Once again, the older of this monstrous pair rose relatively early and, after a spot of breakfast and coffee, set right to making forward progress on Ohio: Fear the Grassman! Apparently, the comfy chair and Ottoman in the Bruggers' basement is the place in the world most conducive to writing stuff. I blew through several chapters on my way to the finish — just as I had blown through the writing of West Virginia: Lair of the Mothman when I was working on it there last year. I'm down to the last couple of chapters of this one, so I may be able to finish the book while we're still in Midland. We shall see.

Noon-ish, Ms. B, Del, Fern, and I found lunch at Culver's, a decent little burger joint at Midland Mall. Ms. B. and I had come here on my first trip to Michigan in 2014, but I hadn't been back since; it was worth the return visit. From there, we hit the road for Coleman, about 20 miles up US 10, to visit Kimberly's Aunt Betty and Cousin Jeannie. We enjoyed spending time at their tranquil place out in the country. On our return trip, we stopped in Sanford, a tiny community about midway between Coleman and Midland, as the ladies wanted to see if the antique store there was open. It was not. However, in Sanford, there is a webcam cache ("Who Named the Best Little Town by a Dam Site?" GCJRV9) — a pretty rare type these days. Although it's technically a two-stage cache, in the interest of sparing the rest of the gang an outing in the cold and snow, I had tracked down the location of the webcam in advance so I could quickly capture my photo to claim the find. Then, while the other folks stopped back at Midland Mall to purchase a few necessary wares, I hunted a couple of the caches in that area. But of all things! I think one of them is just plain missing, and the other — a cache I had sought in vain on a previous visit — was just archived yesterday. Anyhoo, I certainly got in some below-freezing-weather caching today.

Old Rodan at the webcam cache (GCJRV9) in Sanford, MI

During the evening, after making a bit more progress on the novel, I ventured forth with Ms. B. to Whine, our traditional favorite imbibing spot when we're in Midland. We enjoyed far more wining than whining. Then we shopped for our upcoming Late Christmas dinner, which will be Chicken Marsala. Per our tradition, I will be playing chef.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Hey, it's Christmas! It comes a little late for the Brugger-Rainey cadre, but hey, better late than never. Last night at Whine, Kimberly and I were discussing the groceries we needed to pick up for "Christmas," which clearly confused the hell out of a guy sitting next to us, who couldn't help but overhear our conversation. Maybe he thought we were from Canada or some other weird place, I don't know. Anyway, Chicken Marsala headlined our menu, which is one of my favorite dishes to prepare. Perhaps I'll post a recipe for it sometime. Not just now.

Little Christmas scene — one of Del's holiday creations

Dinner in the works

Dinner on the table

The first cut is the deepest. How bloody rude!

Anyway, we exchanged a slew of loverly, loverly gifts. Ms. B. presented her folks with several items she had purchased while we were in Europe. A highlight was a metal-tipped, handmade walking stick she had picked up for Del in Montserrat, Spain (see "Mediterranean Sojourn pt. 7: Montserrat and Homeward Bound," November 8, 2019). At the monastery there, you can buy walking sticks made by the monks, and knowing her dad appreciated such things, Kim decided to get him one as a Christmas gift. A particular stick caught her fancy, but it was a hair too long to fit in her luggage to bring home. And, of course, there was no way we could have just carried it onto the plane. So, the night before we left, she found a serrated kitchen knife in our VRBO apartment, and the lot of us took turns sawing off the metal tip. It was one hell of an effort (that was some hard, hard wood), but we accomplished it. And so now, Del has a metal tip he can enjoy reattaching to his walking stick. (He does all kinds of such crafty things for enjoyment, I might add). Having a little story to go with it made the gift a bit more fun for all involved. Me, I got some of my favorite yogurt-coated pretzels from Holmes County, OH, where we regularly meet Del & Fern in springtime. That area of Ohio, I might add, is the setting of my in-progress-damn-near-finished Ameri-Scares novel, Ohio: Fear the Grassman!

The Chicken Marsala turned out to be one of my best efforts. Dang near perfect was the consensus. However, while slicing bread, Kimberly came perilously close to slicing off a critical finger. At least a slice or two of that bread would have made a nice appetizer for Count Dracula. And now she's stuck making gestures that people who don't know the story might consider a wee bit rude.

During the evening, Ms. B. and I met her old friend Darren at Bar Oxygen, an appealing, if somewhat overpriced lounge at the H Hotel downtown. They do have good drinks (including the Jalapeno Cucumber Gin Rickey, which I discovered there last year (see "More Midland Misadventures," January 12, 2019); it's like a hot and spicy salad in a refreshing drink), and the atmosphere is irresistible. After this, Ms. B. hauled me over to find a cache at a neat location just west of downtown ("You Shall Not Pass!" GC6NM88). Afterward, we spent more mellow times with her folks watching Chopped on The Food Network. This is one of those traditional Brugger thingummies. I actually enjoyed it.

Wednesday, January 22, 2020
The Bruggers went out antiquing pretty early, so I settled myself in the basement in my favorite chair and worked on Ohio: Fear the Grassman! In fact, I ended up all but finishing Ohio: Fear the Grassman! I have only a few short paragraphs left to wrap it up — at least the first draft. I'll need to go in there and do some editing before I send it out to Crossroad. But getting to this point was way too long coming, thanks to one crisis after another back in the fall and early winter.

Unfortunately, a migraine set in just before dinnertime. Fortunately, it was such a mild migraine, it didn't knock me out. After the ocular light show was done, the headache never really developed.

For dinner, Ms. B. and I went to Villa D'Alessandro, which I had never visited, although Ms. B. used to go when it was in another (apparently less expensive) location. We quite enjoyed a bottle of Masi Campofiorin, a nice, not-too-pricey Italian red blend. For the entrées, I ordered the Capelli d'Angelo alla Bolognese (beef & pork Bolognese sauce over angel hair), which was excellent, although for the pasta I would have preferred tagliatelle, which we had in Italy on several occasions. Brugger really enjoyed her Portabella Ravioli — ravioli filled with Portabella mushrooms, ricotta, Pecorino Romano and Parmesan cheese, served in a cream sauce with mushrooms, onions, and garlic. I tried some of hers and almost fell over, it was so good.

And finally, we ended up our last night in Midland watching TV in the basement again with Del and Fern. I don't know exactly when Kimberly and I went to bed, but it was pretty late.

Thursday, January 23, 2020
And off we flew for home. Well, eventually. I had predicted that, because we had blizzard conditions and no delays on the way up, today we would have delays because the weather wasn't bad. We did. Now, there was a bit of snow in Chicago, but that in itself didn't seem to be the holdup. I'm pretty sure overbooked flights lay at the root of it.

Anyway, our Flint to Chicago flight I have dubbed the CO² Flight because it was the talkiest flight I think I have ever taken. The guys behind us never paused to breathe during the whole hour in the plane. Just emitted copious quantities of CO², which would have registered damn near lethal levels had we tested the air. The Chicago to Greensboro flight I have dubbed the Bathroom Bomber Flight because Ms. B. and I sat at the back of the plane, just in front of the john, and from the time we boarded the plane until we landed, that bathroom was loaded. People stood in line to get in there for uncomfortably lengthy spells (uncomfortably for me, I should say). In fact, our take-off was delayed beyond the original delay because some bumpkin had to hit the head after we were all buckled in and ready to be pushed back from the gate. So, we missed that window, and thus had to wait another 20 minutes to roll. Damn, people!

Another fookin' migraine set in right at the start of the Bathroom Bomber Flight. It wasn't as innocuous as yesterday's migraine, but at least it wasn't killer. A relatively mild headache.

Anyhoo, I'm back home, the blog is writ, and I've got a couple of paragraphs to finish up in Ohio: Fear the Grassman!

I sure do wish I had that chair from the Bruggers' basement. Hell, I wish I was in the Bruggers' basement right about now.

That is all.

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!