Falls Lake Rail Trailin’

The Vaccinated But Still Socially Distant No-Dead-Weight Irregulars

No fire-breathing Tyrannosauruses on today’s geocaching adventure, but we did encounter a fire. The Vaccinated But Still Socially Distant No-Dead-Weight Irregulars — Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), Old Rob (a.k.a. Old Rob), and ye olde fart (moi) — met up at Falls Lake in Durham County to hike one of the area’s rail trails. This one is the long-abandoned Durham & Northern rail line, which dates back to 1887. There are ten caches along this particular stretch, and we set out to find them.

The hike took us about a mile and a half out to a point in the lake accessed by the narrowest of land bridges. The cache out there — “Guardian of the Point” (GC1DN30) — was an easy favorite for us, as the scenery out on that long, narrow strip of land turned out to be pretty spectacular. And we found fish. Dead fish. Many dead fish. They had clearly been swimming around there during a period of high water, and when it receded, they were trapped. Well, that really wasn’t what I would consider a favorite moment, but it was different.

Smoke pouring from hollow tree

One of the caches along our trek — “Loco Fuel” (GC5K7D4) — may have been the victim of the fire-breathing tyrannosaurus I sought yesterday (“The Lair of a Fire-Breathing T-Rex”), for at ground zero, we found not a cache but a sizable area of scorched earth. It was recent enough that we found smoke belching from the trunk of a hollow tree right at ground zero. Much to our chagrin, we couldn’t come up with even a melted lump of plastic here, though since we do know the cache owner, we took it upon ourselves to replace the container to (hopefully) keep it in play.

Once finished with the rail trail, our crew sallied forth to Hillsborough where we took a tour of several of the town’s myriad historical buildings by way of a recently published Adventure Lab cache. This one proved fun and edumacational. Then we made our way to Hillsborough BBQ Company for the first group lunch we have had in quite some time. Happily, we were able to sit outdoors, which we all still prefer.

And after all that, exhaustion set in. My birthday is coming up, so I may be even more exhausted at this time next week.

That is all.

All that remains of an old trestle

Something fishy

Heading out to the distant point

The view from GZ back the way we had come

Brugger on a Bike, It's Hot!

Like I said.

Leaf me alone.

Finally today, the rain that's been falling so long I've started channeling Noah let up long enough to grab a couple of caches and do maintenance on several of mine around Martinsville. Brugger and I headed out from Greensboro last night, stopped in Reidsville for a fabulous dinner at The Celtic Fringe (she had superb polenta — yes, at a Celtic place — with vegetables, I had excellent fish and chips), downed a couple glasses of wine at Rania's in Martinsville, and then went round to see Mum, whom we've not visited in too long a while. Today, we met up with my friend Ed "Kuykenew" Kuykendall to find some caches, including a quite novel one ("The A:Maze:ing Micro," GC4F9D9), which was placed by a relatively new geocacher. With over 6,000 caches under my belt, I'd not seen one quite like it before; a commendable job! Afterward, it turned out Mr. Kuykenew had the same lunch destination we did — Garfield's, over in Koehler, which is good, southern home cooking — so we put up with each other for just a bit longer and swapped a caching tale or two... or several dozen. Garfield's fried chicken is the best dead bird around, no question.

Next, Brugger and I hit the Dick & Willie Trail (shut up), hopped on a couple of bikes, and put in about seven miles... which, on a fairly full stomach, in 100% humidity and 90+ degrees, was kind of tiring even for this sturdy old man. When we got back to Mum's, Ms. B. took a nap, and the blasted rain started up again. This is easily the longest spell of essentially nonstop precipitation I've ever lived through. Coming back to Greensboro on the back roads, we came upon road after road closed because of swollen creeks and washed out bridges. No doubt it's something to get used to as the planet gets hotter and uglier.

Perhaps I will sleep well tonight.

That is one big passel of water gushing out from under the old warehouse near the rail trail.

These are activities for which one should always wear a helmet.

Caching Crew and the Blustery Day

Up with the sun on this frigid and windy morning to get over to Ringgold, VA, northeast of Danville, where a group of about 25 geocachers set to work cleaning up the Shawnee Road trailhead for the Danville & Richmond rail trail. I'd been out there hiking and biking lately (Pastorale, Triskaphobia, Where the Hell Are the Undead?) and found that the trailhead had become a regular garbage dump. I'd decided it needed a touch of CITO (cache in, trash out), and the idea caught on with the Southside VA Geocachers' group. So this morning, a good hours' work turned the rubbish heap into a new, pristine bit of woodland, so that finding even a scrap of trash now might be quite the daunting challenge. There was a ton of it out there, to be sure—mostly unremarkable, but I did find an interesting bit: a pink suitcase full of porn. No, I shit you not. It was so waterlogged and heavy, it took two of us to haul it to sponsor Keith McCoy's truck.

Naturally, we're trusting Keith to do the right thing with it.

After the cleanup and a fine brunswick stew lunch at the McCoys' Corner Cafe in Ringgold, several of us set out to hunt a number of caches in the Danville area. A few highly creative hides out there, my favorite being one that involved some serious physical challenges (see pics and video below). Cold and windy out there, I gotta tell you. This, though, is what caching is all about. And all the folks who volunteered to spend a portion of their day improving a natural area are a credit to their respective communities.

Click on pics to enlarge.

Preparing to haul away the fruits of the morning's labor

Not for the faint of heart!

Also not for the faint of heart! Yep, there's a cache container up there.

After the cache has been replaced, it is determined that Damned Rodan must ascend
and make adjustments. Done and done.

The team of daredevils


Damned Rodan's ascent caught on video.

Pastorale

Too busy and/or preoccupied to blog this past week, apparently. Back to work after the most satisfying long holiday, lots of writing, activities on the caching trail, being social (or something like that). Spent most of the day yesterday across the border in Virginia. Headed out to Fieldale, met up with Tom "Night-Hawk" Kidd, grabbed a new cache (alas, missed out on the first-to-find, though I did get several this week, including one today), and did a little maintenance on "Cachefishing" (GC1PA13). Then it was over to Danville to grab a few new ones, mostly on the Richmond & Danville Rail Trail, out east of town.

I'm never uncomfortable out hiking alone, and certainly not on this trail. Still, there's something about it, more so than many of the trails in this region, that speaks of a certain eeriness...no doubt because it goes way out into picturesque, sparsely inhabited country, where my writer's mind can concoct all kinds of...uncomfortable...scenarios. From end to end, the trail is about five and a half miles; I've biked the whole thing once and hiked portions of it several times (most notably for Triskaphobia, one of the truly memorable cache hunts of late). Yesterday was a temperate but gray day on the trail, and I ended up actually meeting a couple of young women, also geocaching, from South Boston. We found a few together, and then parted ways.

The rest of the hike, I didn't see another living soul. Yet I could constantly hear sounds of distant life: occasional gunshots (lots of hunting grounds out that way), lonely birds, furtive voices, and dogs howling—quite mournfully, which only intensified the impression of remote isolation. All most conducive to mentally composing creepy tales, though my mind was admittedly more occupied with hunting the caches at hand. The trail runs past the very serene Mt. Zion Cemetery, where, I am quite certain, zombies gather in their free time, although I didn't actually see any yesterday. Of course, I stand a much greater chance of being accosted by the unsavory living than the not-so-dead, but then that's what makes the prospect all the more entertaining....

When I arrived back at the Rodan Mobile at the Shawnee Rd. trailhead, I performed my good deed for the day, or...well...for however long. There's a ton of trash out there—the disgusting, inevitable refuse of so much disreputable humanity. I spent about half an hour on cleanup detail and filled up a garbage bag, though I don't think I made a very significant dent in the mess. Come spring, when adverse weather may be less a factor, I think I'll sponsor a CITO (cache-in, trash-out) event at that trail head. Get a few cachers together, and the place will be damn near pristine again.

There's one more cache out at the other end of the trail, which I look forward to claiming in the very near future.

Sure, it looks like a peaceful, serene setting, but Night of the Living Dead started out
in just such a place, now didn't it?

Triskaphobia!

So here I am down in this underground pipe. What's that sound? A dreaded subterranean bigfoot, perhaps...?

A little while back, I was getting somewhere near finding my 4,000th cache when talk of going after "Triskaphobia" (GC2935M) came up among a number of local cachers, most of them significantly madder than I. So of course I said, "Absolutely." Come last night, I was four shy of 4K, so I went out in the rain and snagged them. Then, early this morning, it was out with a group of cachers from both near and far (well, as far as the NC Triangle), and—armed with what we hoped was the proper equipment—we set out to conquer this dreaded three-headed beast. I didn't quite know what to expect, other than at least a portion of it involved negotiating some extreme terrain. Stage 1, we determined, was a walk in the park. Wait...did I say "park"? Not park. Dark. Stage 2: that's where Audra "Homestyle" Webb comes in. She's bad, she's mad, she's...hitting the heights. Quite literally (see photos below). As she made her way to perform the necessary task, there was much jubilation from the peanut gallery: cheering, singing, and a jovial young voice yelling, "My mom is committing suicide!" Happily—at least for the rest of us, as it would have made proceeding a bit tricky—there was no gory death involved. Onward to Stage 3, where Mr. Ken "Alethiometrist" MacDonald donned the necessary gear and made the descent into the hairiest of heights. (Again, see photos.) But...oh, shock! There's nothing where there ought to be something. One of the previous finders confirmed that we were right where we were supposed to be...but nature or something more insidious has made off with a key puzzle piece, and we must rely on the wisdom of others to acquire the necessary information. Fortunately, we are able to continue, and only a short time later, I'm striking find #4,000 with my hiking stick.

To be sure, "Triskaphobia" ("The Fear of Three") is not a cache for the faint of heart, small animals (including wallabies, wombats, and woosels), or badly drawn cartoon characters. Those of us who made the journey today must sincerely thank the members of the first-to-find group who shared essential wisdom with us, or we would never have managed to reach stage 1, much less any stages that followed. Compared to what they went through to get the smiley, ours was a picnic at the beach (minus the ocean, sand, food, etc.). But the adventure made this one of my most memorable caches, and surely a fitting object for my 4,000th find. Granted, had it been my 333rd, I would have surely captured the kharmic energy of the entire universe, but since it wasn't, I didn't, and just never you mind.

Click on the pics to enlarge.

In the men's room at the Corner Cafe. Here is wisdom.

Audra makes her way toward one of the stages of "Triskaphobia" (GC2935M).
Don't look down, Audra!

Onto the dangling ladder. Definitely don't look down, Audra!

Audra doing what she does best: singing karaoke in very strange settings.


Ken "Mr. Alethiometrist" MacDonald getting fitted to hunt for another stage.
"Don't you have this in pink and blue?"

Damned Rodan hits 4,000 finds. We R Team "R We Stoopid?"

After all this, Audra, Lonnie "Moncure Bee Dude" Drain, Larry "HDJP" Roach, and I went out and about into the wilds of Pittsylvania County to hunt some more unsuspecting caches. We found a few, all very nice...encountering several other friendly neighborhood cachers on more than one occasion. Alas and alack! At one particularly scenic spot—right amid a sea of squishy soft mud—Larry ends up with a flat tire. It's quite the job to make reparations here, as jacks sink and collapse, spare tires fail to cooperate, and a dead deer lying nearby keeps giving us very hard stares. Eventually, however, we prevail and are back on the road again. A couple more highly entertaining caches—more for the surrounding scenery than the caches themselves. An old delivery truck rusting away peacefully in the woods (at least until Audra tries to drive it away). A haunted house that suddenly comes alive with the sounds of demonic laughter...oh, wait, that's just Audra's young'uns, Zachary and Amanda. But no...oh, lord, they're way over yonder, and the mad wailing is coming from within the old, abandoned ruin. Oh, dear, it's just Lonnie, as giddy as a ghoul in a house of a thousand corpses. Getting him out of the place is harder than changing Larry's tire.

Then it's off to the Happy Holidays event (GC366M4) at the Corner Cafe in Ringgold, where we have sixteen tons of fabulous food and a bunch of cache containers for the Dirty Santa exchange. Yay! It's unbelievably good stuff, since I haven't eaten in a month. Or at least since this morning, which is just like being a month ago, given all that we fit in today.

Martini time. And where's my damned masseuse?

Near "A Permanent High" (GC2ZY2K): Cache on delivery!

At first, just ghostly.

Good Christ! Zombies! Would you go caching with these creeple people?
If you said "yes"...ten points from Hufflepuff.

Where the Hell Are the Undead?

Up and going before sunrise yesterday morning, heading up to the Danville, VA, vicinity for a day of biking, hiking, caching, and dining with the right honorable Rob "Maingray" Maile, Audra "Homestyle" Webb, and their respective young'uns. Our first destination was the Richmond and Danville Rail Trail, which runs about 5.5 miles between Ringgold and Sutherlin, VA. We picked up 24 caches along that route in about three hours, all without encountering the first zombie or bigfoot; a little disappointing, granted, but an enjoyable ride nonetheless. That's the Mt. Zion Cemetery behind me in the photo at left and below, and it was almost surprising that no flesh-eating dead came crawling out, since Maingray generally seems to attract such people. Alas. The only cache along the trail that we didn't pick up was one called Triskaphobia (GC2935M) because it requires special equipment we did not have at our disposal (note a certain high place in the photos below; you can guess the rest).

Once done with the trail, we met up with fellow cacher Larry "HD JP" to hunt some other caches scattered around the nearby Pittsylvania County countryside. Again, no menacing supernatural entities (what's up with that, anyway?), though we enjoyed a few darkly atmospheric settings, particularly around the old Reeve's Mill-Anderson Bridge area, where Audra got to climb a tree. Nearby barbed wire and gun shots suggested that we were either near deer-hunting grounds or a zombie killing field (I'd lay even odds), but we cleared the area before either hunters or the walking dead came our way—and we did snag the caches.

Mt. Zion Cemetery: There are dead people here, though none of them seemed
to be wandering about at the time. Dammit.

The caching party: Zachary "Homekid" Webb, Rob "Maingray" Maile,
and Audra "Homestyle" Webb

House of the Rising Sun

"Hallllooooooooo, down there!" (photo by Audra Buchanan Webb)

"Don't look down, Audra!"

End of the line?

A couple of favorite caches were provided by the mysterious stranger known as Klaussinator: Insight (GC37X4C) and At the End of Your Rope (GC37CYP), neither of which were difficult but were unique and thus memorable. One particular cache, "Shortcut Micro" (GC37128), also a Klaussinator hide, located just north of Danville, proved to be painfully difficult, due to a previous finder who shall remain nameless (Christopher "Ranger Fox" Hall) re-hiding it a bit more deviously than was originally intended. Audra again showed her dexterity by crawling under a wire fence, which ended up getting fresh with her and extricating a fair quantity of her hair. Rotten bastard fence. Having accomplished all these things, we headed back out to the Ringgold-Kentuck area for the caching event, "Turkey's Last Days" (GC366KC), at the Corner Cafe, hosted by cachers Keith and Laura McCoy. Neither Maingray nor myself had bothered to eat anything all day—not even a nibble on the heart of a small child—so we were famished. Fortunately, there was a monstrous pile of food at the event, so we satiated ourselves in very short order.

Right after the feeding frenzy, I received a message that my old college friend, Doug Craft, was passing through Greensboro and could use a place to crash. I haven't seen him in way too many years, so I immediately hit the road and met him at my place, where we tossed back a few drinks and shot the shit until one of us (won't say whom, except that it was Doug Craft) pretty much passed out.

Thus ended an exhausting but ultimately satisfying day of exercise and camaraderie—and 33 caches under my belt. Today...maybe I'll run into a few walking dead. Hell, I'll probably be one of them.