Oh, My Achin’ Feetz

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.

“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.

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.

Looking down from GZ, with the cache in the foreground. It’s a long, long way down!

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.

Old Rodan at “Poser Rock”

Guardrails along the woodland trail. Don’t see that every day.

A couple of tired old farts

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.

NOW it’s back to work on the Ameri-Scares book. Toodles.

Passing under Interstate 40/85 on the Haw River Trail

Ground Zero: the cache is there... somewhere.

Ghosts of Dark Mountain

Have you seen the bridge? Where's that confounded bridge?

Today’s geocaching adventure turned out to be a pretty big one — another trek down to the Uwharrie Mountains, about an hour from here, for some serious hiking and hunting of hidden thingummies in the woods. Today, Team No Dead Weight consisted of Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), Tink (Scott’s faithful cache hound), Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), and Old Rodan (a.k.a. me). Our destination was Dark Mountain, by way of the Jumping Off Rock Trailhead on Flint Hill Road, in what is surely one of the most scenic areas of the forest. The morning started out a little chilly and drizzly, but thankfully, the precipitation ended before we went far on the trail.

We had selected for our primary target a relatively old (from 2006) cache called “Ghosts of Dark Mountain” (GCF3E6) a four-stage multi that requires several miles of hiking on fairly rugged terrain. Mainly, it’s very steep mountainsides covered in slick rocks, especially after as much rain as we’ve had. Each stage of the cache relates a ghostly legend from Dark Mountain, which we all found alluring. The stories go more or less as follows:

Squashblossom: Some 300 years ago, a Cherokee Indian chief fell in love with a young woman named Squashblossom. The two of them often met on top of a high rock ledge (see photo below). The chief was called to war, and Squashblossom promised to wait for him on the rock ledge. However, the chief was killed in battle. When Squashblossom received word of his death, she climbed up to the ledge and leaped to hear own death. Legend has it that on moonlit nights, you can see her ghost standing high on Jumping Off Rock.

The lonely grave of Dania Woodell

Dania Woodell: In the very early 20th century, a preacher came to Poison Fork Creek and built a rudimentary shelter for the attendees of his regular sermons. More and more churchgoers began to gather here, and plans were made to build a church on the site. During this time, ten-year-old Dania Woodell died and was buried close to Poison Fork on the assumption that hers would be the first grave in a new church graveyard. However, for reasons unknown, the church was never built, and now young Dania's grave stands all alone in the deep woods along Poison Fork.

The Hulin Brothers: During the Civil War, brothers William, Jesse, and John Hulin lived in the Dark Mountain area. They were fierce Unionists and Abolitionists, and so refused NC Governor Vance’s order that all young men honor North Carolina by joining the Confederate Army. Thus, the brothers were considered deserters. They survived in a cave in the deep woods for some time, but three months before the war ended, a bounty killer found them and shot them dead in the cave. Their bodies were buried in nearby Lovejoy Cemetery with the epitaph “Murdered.” According to legend, the rocks of the cave where they died are indelibly stained with their blood.

The ghosts caused us no grief on our outing today. Given that the information on the cache page was minimal, we did have the occasional hiccup on our searches. When we came upon Dania Woodell’s grave, we had it in our heads that we would need to use numbers from the dates on the gravestone in a formula to determine the coordinates of the cache’s final stage. It failed to occur to us that the grave was near but not at the coordinates we procured at the preceding stage. We sought and sulked in vain for a while until old dummy here had the brilliant idea to actually hunt at said coordinates. And that is where we found what we needed to continue on our way.

This swag is just a little too familiar...

At the final stage, high up on Dark Mountain, we found the container without any problem. Much to my amusement, inside the cache were two very cheesy SF movies on DVD — The Head and Cobra vs. Komodo — which I realized I had left as swag in some other cache (almost certainly in Greensboro) at least a decade ago! Now, I have on a handful of occasions discovered swag I had left in one cache at some other cache, but never at such a distance and so many years later. These days, I almost never bother trading swag, although I do enjoy occasionally leaving a copy of one of my books for some poor, unsuspecting soul. In any event, I left the DVDs in the cache, mainly because I had dumped them off for a reason, and — who knows — perhaps I will see them again in some other distant cache one of these days.

We were all pretty exhausted by the end of the hike, but there was one other hide not too far away we wanted to go after, named “A Call to Arms” (GC1ERDX). As with many graveyard hides, in order to find the final stage, you are supposed to use numbers on the gravestone to calculate the coordinates. But at this one, there are two graves: one for Jesse Maness, and one for his arm, which he lost in a sawmill accident when he was twelve years old. Happily, Jesse himself did live for many years thereafter. At this cache, though, the cache web page gave just enough information for me to get it into my head I could find the container without actually calculating the coordinates first. And when we arrived at the graveyard, I did indeed walk right to the cache. Yay! Of course, I wasn’t about to leave without seeing the graves for both Jesse and his arm. It did remind me of a cache in Salisbury, which takes you to the graves of both a particular gentleman and his foot, which he lost in an accident.

After this day’s festivities, I have a pretty good tired going on. I sleep now.

Thataway!

It's a long way down to Barnes Creek. The view from Jumping Off Rock

Team No Dead Weight, appropriately distanced: An old dude, Natalie, Scott

Poison Fork, near the grave of Dania Woodell

The summit of Dark Mountain

Tink relaxes after a hard day on the trail

Burial site for the arm of Jesse Maness, who lost it at age 12

The Doom That Came to Eden

So says a line on stone marker placed at the remains of an old scout camp in the deep woods of the Uwharries, about 40 miles south of Greensboro. The marker is part of a multi-cache that requires gathering certain information about the location to procure the coordinates to the final stage. ’Tis a fun one, which I found today.

I woke to a beautiful Sunday morning, just the kind for hitting the geocaching trail. Still, facing the day required a little extra coffee, since yesterday was Ms. B.’s birthday and we pulled quite the late-niter celebrating her now-excessive age. Once duly fortified, I hit the road for the Uwharries, specifically the Joe Moffit Trailhead at the King Mountain Trail, not far south of Asheboro. There I met friend Natalie (a.k.a. Fishdownthestair) and — due to certain complications, a bit later, out on the trail — friend Scott (a.k.a. Diefenbaker). It turned out to be (mostly) an excellent location for social distancing. And we about wore ourselves out on the hike, I can tell you, for the Uwharries are not flat. Not even a little bit. At the end of it, we put in about six miles, which made us about eight geocaches richer.

The scenery certainly hit the spot today. Our hike on King Mountain led us to an old scout camp (“Camp 7”), which is where we found the aforementioned stone marker, as well as the remains a much older well. From there, we went up Little Long Mountain, which led us to a fairly scenic overlook. Unfortunately, it was also the only place where we ran into a concentration of people. Fortunately, not a huge one, but there were enough about that we spent less time and took fewer photos at the location than we might have otherwise. Still, we claimed a cache at the site, and thus we found happiness.

After that, Natalie went her way, and Scott and I headed after a cache at the Lewis-Thornburg house, a restored farm dating back to the 1880s, right on the edge of the Birkhead Mountains Wilderness area. Here, we also encountered a few folks, mostly at the parking lot, but as it turned out, they all headed in different directions than Scott and I. So, we were able to explore the old farm and hunt the cache sans muggles, which is always a happy thing, even when we’re not overly concerned with social distancing.

And all that wandering about wore me out real good. I even came damn near taking a nap late this afternoon, which is highly uncustomary. It almost makes me wonder if some of Kimberly's old age isn’t wearing off on me.

A couple of guinea hens on the road to King Mountain

View from Little Long Mountain

The Lewis-Thornburg house, which dates back to the 1880s

A few of the outbuildings behind the farmhouse

A couple of old farts social distancing on the farm

Another Day on the Caching Trail: The Uwharries

Today's incarnation of Team No Dead Weight: Old Feller, Fishdownthestair, Skyhawk63, Pharaoh

The Uwharries — a relatively low, exceptionally ancient mountain range, some thirty miles due south of Greensboro — conceal a considerable number of geocaches (a hundred sixty-something, I'm led to believe), maybe half of which I've found on numerous visits over the past dozen years. Back in November, the redoubtable local geocacher Ranger Fox (a.k.a. Christopher) placed a bunch of new caches down yonder, and I will confess to you that this is the kind of behavior that makes ravenous geocachers like me go foaming at the mouth. A week or so ago, friend Skyhawk63 (a.k.a. Tom) suggested that today might be a fine day for a select team of us to seek a few of those suckers. And what a day it turned out to be. For December, it proved a morbidly warm day — damn near 70 degrees and somewhat humid. We had dressed with extra layers for the early morning's chilly temperatures, but by 10:00 a.m., for better or for worse, those layers were shedding themselves in ragged droves.

Depending on which of our pedometers one should believe, we put in something between 7.5 and 9 miles in terrain that might be considered a little more extreme than gently rolling hills. Of the seven caches we visited, getting to a couple of them damn near reduced us to quivering, sweat-soaked, perfectly useless mounds of human flesh and blood. However, as the oldest member of our intrepid group, I felt it incumbent upon me to set a positive example on the trail. Thus, I wailed, moaned, groaned, and griped better than almost anyone ever. You just ask. It's true.

Our mostest favorite of these caches lurked in an ancient graveyard out in the midst of the wilderness. Cooper Cemetery dates back to the 18th century, and is the resting place of one Sterling Cooper, who fought in the Revolutionary War.

For all our wandering and searching, the one thing we did not find today was the Uwharrie Bigfoot. Yes, reputedly, one or more specimens of the Bigfoot clan reside in the Birkhead Wilderness, right smack in the heart of the Uwharries. A couple of years ago, I discovered the movie Stomping Ground, about a search for Bigfoot in the Uwharries. It wasn't particularly good (nor was it awful), but it was fun, and seeing so many familiar locations in a wacky Bigfoot filum made me smile. Now, today, I did stumble in a rather massive indentation in the ground that might have been a Bigfoot track, but the considerable weathering made conclusive identification impossible. Because I'm  never one to leap to unjustifiable conclusions, I'm just gonna say it was a big old Bigfootprint and leave it at that. So there.

At the end of the day, we had seven caches under our belts. The company and exercise couldn't have been better — well, it might have if Bigfoot had come along — and the late lunch that Ms. FDTS and I had at The Flying Pig in Asheboro sure hit the spot. When I got home, to soothe the aftermath of my exertions, I took an honest-to-god hot bath, something I've not done probably since I had more hair up north. At least now I am clean, relaxed, and have availed myself to a Damned Rodan's Dirty Firetini (okay, so maybe there were two of them). Tomorrow's lineup includes Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I must tell you, I'm a little concerned about my Star Wars geek status, for there was a time I camped out in front of theaters for Star Wars tickets, and some people tell me I actually went to see the original Star Wars in 1977 no less than 23 times at the theater. This is probably the longest I've gone after a Star Wars release without hieing myself directly to the theater. Ah, well. I'm a getting to it, and that's what counts.

That is all.

A rock cairn at the summit of one of several high elevations we experienced today

Old dude takes a breather at the top of a mighty high ridge

Pharaoh looking for a helpful message from God at the cache site. No helpful signs were forthcoming,
so we had to find the cache the old-fashioned way.