Return to the Black Lodge

About five years ago, I placed a series of Twin Peaks–themed geocaches ("Project Blue Rose") in various locations in Greensboro, one of which lurks deep beneath the city streets in an old storm drain system. Yesterday, I was caching in Greensboro with friend Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), and it came to my attention that he had never claimed this particular hide. I've wanted to check on it for a long time—caches placed in such an unfriendly environment frequently end up damaged or going missing—so I suggested he go after it with ye olde cache owner accompanying. He found the idea agreeable.

So, off we went to ground zero: a culvert entrance, about four feet in diameter, which hides at a small creek that flows through Greensboro's Lindley Park neighborhood. We haven't had a lot of rain lately, but a strong, steady current of water flowed through the pipe. Fortunately, both of us had worn our trusty, waterproof hiking boots, so, with flashlights in hand, into the gaping maw we went.

 

FYI, long before my "Project Blue Rose" series, this particular tunnel had been used for a stage of a multi-cache called "Greensboro Underground" (which I found in June 2009; you may read about that wild adventure here). I credit that underground excursion with curing me of arachnophobia, and had Scott and I found ourselves back in a cramped chamber filled with giant, hairy wolf and fishing spiders, I might have experienced a fair adrenaline charge; however, it's too early in the season for the big multi-legged monsters to be out and about, and I reckon that's fine.

 

I found that out, this many years later, negotiating such a cramped space for such a distance caused me a bit more physical discomfort than it had in those old days (okay, yeah, it hurt), so in the future, I may need to limit my subterranean excursions to those that allow for standing upright. The top of my skull will thank me.

Once we reached our final destination, I was pleased to see that the Project Blue Rose container remained intact and in its proper location. The log sheet, however, had gotten soaked, so I will need to replace it. I can do that next time I'm in the area; I reckon my back and knees (and head) will hold out for at least a few more ventures into these deep, dark confines. Maybe I'll plan my next one for when the spiders are out and about, just to get a charge.

 

Anybody wanna go along?

Looking back toward the entrance as we make our way in...

L: The view ahead...as far as our flashight beams will reach; R: Diefenbaker claims his prize

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

Beyond the Gate

Today was the day to attempt a new geocaching milestone: geocache find #12,000. For this outing, the Socially Distanced No Dead Weight Irregulars — Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), and the old radioactively mutated flying rubber prehistoric reptile — welcomed friend NCBiscuit (a.k.a. Linda) to our ranks as we went after a nice tunnel hide in Durham, NC, called “Beyond the Gate” (GC5C0C4), placed several years ago by friend Vortexecho (a.k.a. Christian). Ground Zero is a lovely location, which you see in the photo above, and it’s right behind the apartment complex where my daughter lived after she graduated college, back in... well... a handful of years ago. The pipe is big, so once inside it, we could easily walk upright. We found the biggest challenge to be wriggling through that broken gate. The pipe isn’t very long — maybe a hundred feet — but it sure is wet in there. You end up in a drain out in the middle of a pond.

Inside that pipe, I encountered the biggest crawdude I’ve seen since I was a kid, when I loved playing in the creek across from our house in Martinsville. He measures almost six inches long there. He proved friendly enough, though he was not at all an enthusiastic conversationalist. So as not to upset him needlessly, I avoided mentioning that crawdad is one of my favorite delicacies.

After completing the deed at “Beyond the Gate,” we shrugged off the increasingly oppressive heat and moved on to a nearby cache that has been in the wild for several days but has yet to be found. It isn’t meant to be especially difficult, but a number of geocachers have been unable to locate it. Count us among them. After a diligent, fairly lengthy search, we were forced to give up in frustration.

Some old fellow hanging around in the dark

From there, Ms. NCBiscuit departed, leaving the regular Irregulars to strike out after a number of caches along the American Tobacco Trail. Hoo, doggies, was it ever hot and ugly out there! We decided to end our day at another of Vortexecho’s tunnel caches, but unfortunately, claiming a find on this one was not to be. LV-426 (GC4YJFD) lurks deep inside a series of very tight culverts, requiring either crawling or very constricted duck-walking. I opted for the latter. Once way down deep inside, though, we encountered some smoky fumes oozing from a couple of pipes — one of the inevitable hazards of such locations — and decided to abandon our search. Never let it be said we are irredeemably foolhardy. Merely foolish.

That ended our adventure for the day, although before coming back home, I had to get even hotter and filthier helping Brugger put up a new mailbox in front of her house, since the old one was by all rights condemned. That done, I finally made it home and fell into the shower, for which every organism within a hundred feet of the property thanked me profusely.

It was a day.

Beyond the gate at “Beyond the Gate”

Old Rodan and VERY Old Diefenbaker

Heat be hot!

South of Heaven: Abyss

Team No Dead Weight: Old Dude, Scott, Natalie. I just realized these two were not properly socially distanced
here. At least, I was good. I am always good. Sort of.

I haven’t come home from geocaching so hot, wet, and filthy dirty since the last time I came home so hot, wet, and filthy dirty, and that is some kind of hot, wet, and filthy dirty. Team No Dead Weight — today’s incarnation consisting of Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott), and I — set out this morning for Chapel Hill/Durham for the express purpose of knocking out a few geocaches that require venturing into the deep, dark underground. We ended up in five tunnels, I believe it was, two of which were part of a single multi cache.

Our view for the better part of the day

We started out with a fine multi called “Preparation H: Feels Good on the Hole” (GC340DE) in Chapel Hill. It’s one of a series of “Preparation” caches, which require you to have some particular tool of the trade in order to acquire the prize. In this case, the tool in question is a flashlight, and we made sure we had an adequate supply of them for our trek. The first stage led us to not so much a tunnel as a tight, lengthy enclosure under a bridge. The object bearing the coordinates to the next stage proved quite challenging to turn up. Reaching the second stage did require going into a bona fide, fairly lengthy storm drain tunnel. The stage itself was not a container per se, but a novel method of revealing coordinates to the actual cache. It lurked just off a nearby trail, at ground level, but on what is called, in the vernacular, high ground. Someone was kind enough to leave a rope to assist with our ascent and descent. A bloody fun hide this one.

Next, we sought a little monster called “Strategies Against Architecture: Darkness” (GC1JXYB), deep inside a narrow tunnel that required crawling to negotiate. Not my favorite means of ingress, I can tell you. And sadly, this effort turned out to be a bust. The cache may still be in there, but damned if we could find it. This cache and the next two were placed by friend Vortexecho (a.k.a. Christian), who is well-known locally for his more extreme geocache hides.

Scott trying not to fall down go boom

We had similar bad luck at a much longer tunnel — “Mind the Frogs” (GC1JZC1) — in which we could stand partially upright, at least. This journey turned out to be fairly lengthy, our search intense, but once again, we got skunked. Most depressing, since we did put in such effort in hopes of making the find. Alas!

But then, the pièce de résistance: “Strategies Against Architecture: Abyss” (GC1QF2P). I think Vortexecho may have outdone himself on this one. It’s a two-mile “hike” in a very long, very dark, very wet tunnel on the outskirts of Durham. Thing is, thanks to none of us adequately reading the cache description beforehand (which one really ought to do, especially when you’re going deep underground), we didn’t realize just how lengthy this thing would be. After we had slogged and sloshed through the tunnel, which was mostly big enough to traverse in something akin to an upright position, we decided to re-read the cache description.

Oh, yeah. Two miles. We had gone about a quarter of that.

The aftermath: hot, sweaty, soaking wet,
Filthy mcNasty old dude

Well, of course, there was nothing for it but to keep on sloshing. Happily, we encountered no Copperheads, although we did see Black Widows in profusion, all just lounging about. Black Widows, at least, aren’t particularly nosy (noses they ain’t got!), preferring instead to mind their own business unless bothered. And we bothered them not at all.

Finally, we saw a light ahead (the “room of golden air”), which turned out to be a large junction with a drain overhead, through which golden sunlight came pouring. And there, chained to a pillar in the center of the chamber, there lay our quarry: a nice, large lock & lock container, just above head-high. When I opened the container, though, it emptied a considerable quantity of water on me, which indicated that the chamber has been totally flooded on occasion (possibly quite recently, given the amount of precipitation we have suffered). Needless to say, dangers do exist in this environment. A couple of years back, a sinkhole opened above the pipe, causing the total collapse of one section. One would not wish to be in the pipes during any appreciable rainfall. (And I had only been home a short time this afternoon when one of our notorious gullywashers began.)

All in all, an invigorating, if damned filthy-dirty day. I sleep now.

Big honking millipede — about six inches long — wandering about in the tunnel

Taberna Ferramentorum and Others

That unusual-looking critter you see in the photo is a two-foot-long Hammerhead worm, the first specimen of which I've ever seen in the wild. Team No Dead Weight turned it up while hunting a geocache over in Chapel Hill this morning. Hammerhead worms are not especially dangerous to humans, but they do prey on earthworms, which are beneficial to humans. Hammerhead worms use a virulent neurotoxin on their prey, which actually dissolves the earthworms they catch. This particular chap might not be what I would term pleasant-looking, but it certainly was fascinating. That thing just kept extending and extending, appearing to actually grow longer and longer as it moved. We let it go on its way, although had I known at the time it doesn't really qualify as a dear friend to people, I might have had a somewhat different reaction.

Our team — Robgso (a.k.a. Old Rob, a.k.a. Bloody Rob), whom we managed to keep up with this week (see "Where's Rob" from last Sunday); the ubiquitous Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie); and Diefenbaker (a.k.a. Scott) — had determined to visit the North Carolina Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill, as there are numerous geocaches on a host of trails in and around the facility. The day was miserably hot, but we made the best of it, as we found a number of intriguing caches, including one in the deep, dark catacombs underneath the local Trader Joe's.

We started out at a five-stage multi-cache — Taberna Ferramentorum (GCYZ2Q) — which we didn't realize had such a long history. It was originally placed in 2006, and it hasn't had many finds in recent years. It started out simple enough, but as we proceeded through the stages, which included Roman numerals etched on rocks and such, we found that time and weathering had done a job on the information we needed. By a process of educated guesses and pure intuition, we managed to make our way toward the final stage, which turned out to be at a very old, very secluded area back in the woods just outside the Botanical Gardens' farthest reaches. Completing this multi required no little time and a fair distance hiking, but we enjoyed the experience immensely, especially since we had to rely on some outside-the-box thinking to make the find. We also found Roberto, a beautiful, six-foot black rat snake, who seemed pleased to have some friendly visitors. We sat and chatted for a while, but the conversation was, admittedly, somewhat one-sided.

A neat old, abandoned bridge we encountered along our way. It's not far from collapsing
into Morgan Creek, it would seem.

Roberto

Three-quarters of Team No Dead Weight: Bloody Rob, Diefenbaker, Old Rodan

From here, we made our way to several other caches, most of which proved relatively easy to find. We had spent quite some time on the trail by this point, so we headed to Cerritos Cantina for a late (and very satisfying) Mexican lunch. Scott and I both had the Tacos Diabla, which, I will tell you, are not even a little bit not-hot. They are hot. We hollered for happy. And just hollered.

All day, Ms. FDTS had been clamoring to hunt an underground cache. The NC Triangle has plenty to choose from, most courtesy of Mr. Vortexecho (a.k.a. Christian) his very own self. And there was indeed one that looked tantalizing. It's been staring at me from the map for many years now. We did notice that it had not been found in almost six years, and you never know how a cache in an extreme environment is going to weather the years. But we decided it was worth a shot. I won't post the cache name/GC number here, although by way of deduction, I'm sure some geocachers might determine which one it actually is.

Old Rodan at the cache

Our destination turned out to be an underground passage, about 50 feet wide, into which Booker Creek flowed. Old Rob, being intensely un-fond of such grottoes as this, opted to remain outside, while Diefenbaker, FDTS, and I made our way into its shadowy confines. We had to walk on a narrow ledge along one wall, a few feet above the rather disturbingly deep water. The first thing we found inside was mud. Deep, slippery mud, all along the ledge. We also found lots and lots of huge spiders, which made for pleasant enough company, as long as they didn't try to hold our hands. After going some distance, we spied a foreboding object ahead — a long, narrow pipe that spanned the passage — which we suspected would host our quarry.

Indeed it did.

It was decided that Old Rodan would do the retrieval honors. Why, thank you so much, my friends. Getting onto the overhead pipe and scooting out to the container indeed proved physically challenging, but as we were this close, there was no way we were going to let this thing get away from us. I persevered, and a few minutes later, I had the container in hand and Team NDW scrawled on the log.

Then I had to make my way back to the narrow space by which we had accessed GZ. What fun! Scooting backward, I can tell you, is somewhat more difficult than scooting forward, particularly so close to the rafters, which constantly threatened to gong me in the head. Happily, Diefenbaker did a fine job warning me when I should duck. Soon enough, my feet were back in the deep, slippery mud, and we trudged once again into the hated heat and brilliant, blazing sun.

And that, my friends, is what geocaching was all about. After that experience, I felt enervated for a short while, but I've recovered nicely, and tomorrow there is a lengthy kayak trip on the docket. It's gonna be another scorcher too. Hooooeeeey.

And g'night.

Albert, a great big snapping turtle we made friends with at North Carolina Botanical Gardens

Team No Dead Weight

Waterproof?

Well, that was a hoot. Four Old Farts gathered early this morning for geocaching on and around the American Tobacco Trail in Durham. Bloody Rob, Yoda Rob, Diefenbaker, and Old Rodan began with a couple of quick traditional caches in a crazy busy shopping area, but then we had to adjust our elevation to go after one of Vortexecho's (a.k.a. "Gone 2 Far") ubiquitous underground culvert hides. Just to get to the entrance, we had to hack our way through a veritable jungle of briers — that nasty, tiny, barbed type that cling to you like Velcro, shredding your skin and clothes until you somehow separate yourself from the little bastards. Bloody Rob was not the bloody one today, though, because I went first and did most of the clearing of the passage to the tunnel entrance. This resulted in considerable bloodletting and the occasional hollering for Mom that would have surely prompted Mom to clap her hands over her ears and sing "La, la, la, la, la!"

Naturally, no sooner had we cut our trail through this field of natural barbed wire than we saw Diefenbaker waltzing down the hill off to our right, which he cheerfully proclaimed free of briers. This was a really rotten thing to do, but we did use his route to go back out once we had completed our errand.

Then, for us, it was a delicate dance to get across a few rocks and into the pipe without drenching our boots. Done and done. The pipe wasn't too tight, and we could walk by bending over slightly — this was encouraging. We did notice raccoon tracks and droppings along the way, and I recalled a log indicating that a previous cache hunter had encountered a coon in the pipe. Mainly, though, since it was (and is) ridiculously warm out, around 80 freaking degrees, I was more concerned about encountering Copperheads, which tend to be fond of the environment we were occupying.

At the next junction, the pipe got narrower, resulting in more than a few conked noggins, and the going became a bit slower. Then, stepping into the chamber at the next junction, I glanced up and, sure enough, there was our raccoon friend lounging on the rungs of the ladder. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and I wanted to name him George and hug him and pet him and squeeze him, but mean old Uncle Bloody Rob said no. C'mon, jeez, just because the little fellow had sharp teeth and claws...? I took a couple of photos of George, but they ended up blurry because I was also trying to hold the flashlight and keep from slipping and falling in the cramped chamber. That's him hanging out at the manhole cover in the accompanying image. (You can click on these to enlarge.)

"Hello? Is it me you're looking for?"

Anyhow, we still had a ways to go, and this pipe was the smallest of all, necessitating either crawling or — as I did — lowering to one's haunches and shuffling along a hundred feet or so through shallow water.

At last, mission accomplished. Back through the pipe, wave to George as we pass, and finally reach sunlight — and few more briers, just for good measure.

From there we began our hike on the American Tobacco Trail, found a fair number of mostly traditional hides (an old telephone in the woods was something of a favorite), and eventually made our way to Ted's Montana Grill, which specializes in bison and is thus one of my favorite establishments to frequent. Service was very slow today, but the food was incredible, as always. I figure that will pretty much take care of today's vittles, and if I actually do care to eat to anything more tonight, I can go outside and nibble on some grass.

Ta ta!

L: Old Fart #1 (scary). R: Old Fart #2 (scarier).

Old Farts at the Center of the Earth

Evil Rodan in the deep, dark underground

It's been many moons since Team Old Fart — Rob "Robgso," Robbin "Rtmlee" (a.k.a. "Yoda Rob"), Scott "Diefenbaker," and Old Rodan — got together for big a day of geocaching. But at long last, get together we did, and today we hit the northern Chapel Hill area, primarily to get in some hiking and caching at Hollow Rock Park, but afterward figuring to go hunting wherever the wind blew us. Happily, that wind (quite a brisk one) blew us a) into the depths of the earth, and b) to Dickey's BBQ Pit for lunch. We had not really pre-planned an underground venture, although I had noted there were a couple such caches in close proximity to the park — at least one of which I had visited in my earliest days of geocaching, before I had any idea there might be caches hidden in the drains, culverts, and hidden passages deep below ground. Here, the hider is one who is known to possess an exceptionally evil mind (Christian "Vortexecho," sometimes called "Gone2Far"), and the two we found today, while enjoyable and even a little challenging, were far from his most insane (see "Pandora's Box" for a fine example of his devilish mind at work). So after our hike, we decided to see what we could see by the lights of our puny little flashlights in the depths of the earth.

Looking down from the cache at "Concrete Tomb"

"Concrete Tomb" (GC1JZBX) was the first of our subterranean targets. The method of accessing this one became quickly apparent, and getting into the pipe without falling into some deep water proved to be a challenge that a casual onlooker probably would have found hysterical. Once inside, it was not far to ground zero, but snagging the cache itself required a relatively minor physical challenge that, had it gone wrong, likely would have resulted in either extreme wetness or a concussion. Nothing so untoward happened, but I was a little nonplussed when I pulled the container from its hiding place and Diefenbaker, with a nasty chuckle, told me I had just missed grabbing a rather sizeable spider that was lurking behind the cache. Whoopee shit, Mr. D. Anyway, getting back out involved something of a reprise of the maneuver we used to get inside, only in reverse, and I credit Yoda Rob's timely presence that prevented me swamping myself in the swamp.

Diefenbaker signs the log at
"I'll Show You Evil!"

It was back in 2008 that I first visited "I'll Show You Evil!" (GC1FBNG), and I spent lord knows how long poking around a sealed manhole cover, thinking there must be a brilliantly camouflaged container somewhere around it. Nope. Not around it — somewhere under it. But the only way to access the passage is to find the pipe that leads to it. Here, that could have been one excruciating challenge, had not Mr. Lee already experienced the joy of this particular evil hide. He led us to where we needed to be, and we knew by way of our GPS coordinates that we were in for a lengthy underground journey. Now, Old Robgso has never developed a fondness for the underground cache set, and initially it was his intention to sit it out while the rest of us went culvert diving. But peer pressure can be a powerful thing, and by the time we hunched ourselves over and crept into the pipe, Old Rob was with us. Now, I won't come out and say there followed a lot of swearing, caterwauling, and peeing of drawers, but there might have followed a lot of swearing, caterwauling, and peeing of drawers. Regardless, by the time we reached our destination, it wouldn't be unfair to say that Old Rob was enjoying himself. I've done enough of these underground hides that I'm relatively comfortable in the dark depths, but this one was of sufficient length to require a couple of rest stops, and there were sounds in the distance that made us think a) there might be a monster in there with us or b) there might be a monster in there with us. Clearly, since I'm here composing this account, the monster didn't get us, but the thing I glimpsed when I looked back, just before exiting the pipe, appeared not a little bit friendly and even less human.*

As I mentioned above, the ill wind that blew us underground also blew us right to Dickey's BBQ Pit for lunch, and a fine lunch of beef brisket and onion tanglers it was. For a chain restaurant, Dickey's pretty damn well rocks.

We picked up a good many other caches over the course of the day, but it was the challenge of the underground that made it all quite special. That, and the great company of old farts, who have been much missed on recent caching excursions. Old Farts Unite!

*I realized later that this was just Diefenbaker.

Mad men

L: What do you suppose that is up there? R: And the old man swore he'd never cache in such a place!

Rob and Rob taking a break from the rigors of traveling through the pipe — uphill, both ways.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

There's a nice new multi-cache in town called "Greensboro Underground," and guess where you get to hunt. Yes...down there. So, right after work, I met up with friends Night-Hawk (a.k.a. Tom) and the Sneaky Bulldog (a.k.a. Ethan), all of us dressed for the occasion and armed with several flashlights. Thus, we commenced our journey. To my chagrin, halfway through the adventure, my brightest light began to dim rapidly, even with relatively new batteries; happily, I carried a spare, and between us, there was no shortage of lighting.

At the first of the three stages, we snagged the coordinates for the next, held our tongues just right, and made our way into the earth's depths. Here, the diameter of our conduit was only about four feet, so it was t-i-g-h-t. And then what should our lights reveal but...spiders. BIG FAT HAIRY BLACK F-'ING SPIDERS—of the four-inch leg span variety—in mass profusion, hanging on every surface; up, down, and all around.

Night-Hawk and the Bulldog gently suggested that I go first.

All righty then! Only ever-so-slightly daunted, onward I went. You should have heard the Bulldog scream when one of the spiders passed right under his legs. Still, at a junction, he bravely took the point and found the requisite clue in short order. Another stage down. By now, it was nighttime, and when we burst exuberantly free of the depths and barreled onto the nearby sidewalk, we surprised an elderly woman walking her dog. Her cry of alarm may still be echoing somewhere out in space. We apologized and explained that we were running from a tunnel full of giant spiders. She made haste to part company with us.

For the third stage, we found ourselves with lots of ground—or rather, underground—to cover. At several junctions, we had more than one choice of tunnels to take, and it paid to choose wisely. At least in these, we could mostly stand upright. For a long distance, we were able to straddle the narrow streams flowing beneath our feet, and we began to think we might actually come out of this endeavor without getting soaking wet. However, came a time the water grew wider and deeper, so we finally said the heck with it, and now my boots are drying out for the next couple of days.

At long last, and lord knows how far in, I spied the cache. But it was here I made a grave mistake! Night-Hawk had kept right on going, but in my enthusiasm, I blurted, "It's here!" Had I not, he might still be down there having scads of fun while I'm lounging around above-ground, enjoying a post-cache martini. I'm sure I'll do better next time.

Actually, I'm glad Night-Hawk is still with us because he documented the whole journey with pics. I was reluctant to take my camera with me because I am a devout klutz, and probably would have dunked it.

At least I am a wise klutz.

Wait, what...?

The Bulldog wanted to play ball, so we let him.

On and on it goes...

Success....