Jolly Green Descent to Hell- August 5, 2006 Part 1

For those of you who have lamented that we'll eventually get better at this geocaching thing, thereby making for less interesting blogging, this week should put you at ease. This week, we headed up to Green Mountain in Huntsville on the recommendation of several area cachers who said we should check out the "Jolly Green" series of caches. If we had doubts that the hobbits and hobbit sympathizers were trying to kill us, this week erased it.

Actually, that's not really fair. While the hobbity types did sing the virtues of the Jolly Green caches, they also told us it was "a bit of a climb" and Frodo even met us at the entrance, drew us a map, and gave us his number to call if we "got to a point where you can't go any more." You'd think that sentence alone, from the person who nearly killed us on Monte Sano mountain, would have given us pause.

You'd think, but you'd be wrong...

Actually, the first thing that should have given us pause was when Fish, our eternal planner, sent us a mapped out list of caches in the area, mounting up into a 2.7 mile trip. 2.7 miles is around what Mad Mike and I do at the gym every night walking. It's more than Tserof's ever done more than a couple of times. But, being idiots, we decided that it was almost all downhill, we'd bring plenty of water, and we'd stop frequently to rest ourselves.

Little did we know...

The day started off as usual for the Zen Bassmasters, with us having to turn around. We planned to park Fish's Jeep at the bottom of the trail and my van at the top so we wouldn't have to hike back up (the only smart thing we did). Unfortunately, this wasn't as simple a plan as it would seem. By now, you should know the routine here but, for any new readers, it went something like this...

"Is that the parking lot?"
"I can't tell... Maybe."
"Should I stop?"
"Don't stop here."
"But isn't that the church?"
"I think it is..."
"But we're going to the top!"
"Without Fish and Tserof?..."
"Yes we're... oh..."

By that time, the church had passed us. No problem, I thought. I'll just turn around. Unfortunately, after the church, there's not a heck of a lot of places to turn around until WAAAY up on the top. It ended up being for the best though as the "top" parking area was not well marked and we'd have missed it if we hadn't seen Frodo's car there.

We hurried afraid he might leave before we got back. No fear. Frodo saw the "low rider minivan" and knew it had to be us. We went back and got Tserof and Fish, then headed back up.

The second thing that should have given us pause was that it was HOT. I mean hot hot hot. Hot to a point where "hot" becomes a four letter word. We commented on it, but being idiots, we didn't say "hey, let's do the 3 mile hike in October..." We said "oh, it'll be cooler once we get in the woods." Besides, we had an entire backpack full of water. What could go wrong?

What indeed...

That's all I can do for today, but I promise more very soon. Next time on Adventures in Geocaching, we have rattlesnakes, dehydration, hobbit gambling, and Tserof looking like this...



See you soon...