Creepy Caching

Hear that sound? Listen closely. Hear it? No, you don't. Because it's silence. Pure, blessed silence that can only come from a week of caching without rugrats for a change. Aaah...

This week, we've got yet another geocaching newbie who read our site and still wanted to come with us. P.T. Barnum was right. There's one born every minute...

In this case, it's Fish's friend Jaqks. Again I felt obligated to make sure he'd read our blog (he had) and that he still wanted to come (he does). I figure if I ever have to testify about someone dying on one of our trips, I'll have this to fall back on. "Well, your honor, he read our blog and he still wanted to come. We asked..."

I found out that Jaqks was a rap fan so I dug down into the Gryphon musical archive a bit and dusted off something for him. Our soundtrack of the week is L.L. Cool J's "All World." Old school, baby!

This week we're doing caches in the Chapel Hill/Eagleville area, culminating with two caches that we expect to test what limited abilities we have as a team. The first is It! a 4.5 difficulty cache that has given cachers with far more ability than us fits. The second is "Jog, P.S., This one's for you", which is a member only cache, so I won't post a link. Man's gotta have his principles somewhere.

Before we got started, we decided to take Jaqks over to our cache Wabbit Season to get it for him, take he, Mad Mike, and Chri over to Horse Mountain, since they weren't with us when we got it, and re-try Celebration Station, which we DNF'd a few weeks ago because our GPS units went satanic on us and wouldn't point the way.

Nothing really to note on Horse Mountain. We stood back and let Chri, Jaqks, and Mad Mike find this one and they located it with no major problems. My old business card from the radio station that used to be at this location was still there (not sure why it wouldn't be. I can't imagine anyone wanting it.)

At Wabbit Season, we all sat back and let Jaqks find the cache. The only thing of note here is that the ducks from the pond across the street evidently got pissed when they discovered that we weren't there to feed them bread and proceeded to migrate across the street and surround our van, quacking angrily. It was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie...

We then moved on to Celebration Station. Fortunately, the GPSr behaved today and led us right to the cache. We looked here when we came before, but somehow missed it. Jaqks found the cache. We're hoping this means he's got good enough luck to trump the collective bad luck of the entire group.

Next up is Hazel Cemetary. Nice little spot. The founder of Web school is buried here. Pretty easy find. The only thing of note here is that we saw three dogs in the cemetary just sitting in a row and staring at this one tombstone. It was a little bit creepy, like something out of one of those old Hammer films. Anyway, none of the dogs looked much like Hellhounds (the three tails wagging in unison kind of ruined the effect) so we went on looking. When we finished and were headed back to the car, a little chihuahua, who must have been the leader of the bunch, showed up and they all followed him elsewhere.

Next up was yet another of our revisits of previous DNFs. This one is "Tom's Miniature Donkey Church, which you may remember from our caching trip on little Vorin's birthday a few weeks ago. Then we had to skip it because of a muggle in the parking lot preparing to mow the church lawn. Today, the lot was muggle-less (and looked as if it hasn't been mowed since that day. If any of you church folken read this blog, you really should trim your lawn up a bit). The mini-donkeys in the field next to the church were nowhere to be found but we located the cache. The log was full so we pulled another out of our handy bag o tricks and added it to the old one.

Next up is "Everything you ever wanted to know about..." It's a guardrail cache so I was immediately not happy. I hate guardrail caches. Too exposed, often no good place to park and too predictable. They're just not my thing. But this is one of the cases of the cache description being cool enough to overcome its nature. The cache is GCPACE and I recommend everyone go check it out to learn more than you ever knew (or knew you wanted to know) about guardrails. We see them everyday but, if you're like me, you never think about them unless you have a wreck and smack into one. Pretty easy find.

Next up, since it was on the way, we picked up "Amber Waves of Grain" for Jaqks. I dropped off the "I Found It!" bug here and picked up another. This area still gives me the creeps. Little cemetary in the middle of a cornfield. I read a Stephen King novel with this as the plot and I didn't really want to stay and be killed by Malachi and his little band of goons.

Next up was Abode of the Sun King. It's right at the intersection of four busy roads. We got a lot of stares and one person who stopped and asked us what we were doing. Chri tried to explain geocaching to her but she wasn't getting it. I wish Chri had explained "car seats for small children" to her as she had what looked to be about a 4 year old standing up in the passenger seat... Some people are morons. Anyway, found the cache and moved on in case "mother of the year" got suspicious and called the cops.

Next up was Gitty Up, which is done by my old "pal" JoGPS. It was near the Triune Riding Club and was a pretty easy find. I know I've said things were "scary" a lot today and it's not just a blog theme. There really were a lot of spooky things going on today but this cache had the spookiest. Inside was a travel bug that someone had attached to a talking asparagus from the Veggie Tales. When you pressed a little button behind the asparagus' head he, in this sickening little sweetsie voice, would say "Jesus loves you, just like he loves me! Hehe...!" I know that doesn't sound so horrible but trust me, the combination of the voice, the phrase, the little giggle at the end, and the fact that it's a friggin' vegetable, made it one of the most demonic things I ever heard. It's not just a vegetable, but an asparagus, which ranks right behind brussel sprouts on my list of foods that traumatized me in my childhood. Blech. Ash took the bug, against my protests that it was possessed by satan and that she was opening our home to evil spirits. Ashlynne, who obviously never watched the Exorcist, pronounced the thing "harmless" and brought it along. She said something about placing it in Ice-T but I nixed that. I don't want that evil thing anywhere near any cache of mine.

Next was "College Grove Park." By this time it was starting to rain so we were trying to get as close to the cache as possible before getting out. Found it pretty easily. The only thing of note to happen here was when we were leaving. I put the van in reverse and attempt to see behind me around the wall of fat people in the back seats. Just as I hit the gas to reverse, the train nearby hit its whistle, scaring the bejeebus out of me as I thought I was about to hit something. Once I got my heart back down in my chest, I recognized it for what it was and had to endure picking for the rest of the day from the Bassmasters. They should have been happy Ash wasn't driving. She would have just backed on up until she hit the train...

By now it's raining a pretty good clip. We head to Big Tree in the Woods and discover that a model house has been built near the tree and someone's home. We sent Fish to grab the cache in the rain while I kept watch for people coming out of the house, ready to peel away and let Fish's vaunted people skills keep him out of jail. He signed the log and got back to the car just as someone came out to investigate and we left. I don't expect that cache will be around much longer since it looks like it's becoming a subdivision.

Next was It! We'd heard so much about this one that we were really looking forward to it. I wish I could tell you all about this cache but anything I say would spoil the fun. Let's just say that Angelflye, who placed the cache, is the master. Misdirections abound, decoys lure you away, and the two Stephen King fans in the group tried way too hard to overthink the non-existent connection to the book of the same name. Took six of us an hour but Ashlynne finally figured it out. Absolutely the coolest cache I've ever done. And number two isn't even close. It reminded me of when I saw the Sixth Sense the first time. Once you know where the cache is, you look back at all the clues in the description and realize they were all pointing you in the right way all along. Brilliant. Beyond brilliant. It inspired us. If we can find someplace without too many muggles around, we are already planning a Stephen King's Dark Tower themed cache using what we learned here and through all of our other caches. It should be a true work of evil if we ever get it out. I don't know if we can out-evil It! or not though. I just can't say enough good about this cache. If you're one of our North Alabama readers, it is absolutely worth your drive to come do this cache. Seriously. Tell us you're going and we'll meet you in Fayetteville to go with you. Tserof still needs to get it anyway.

Next was Sledgehammer. Ugly walk to this one, full of tall grass that hid a ton of thorny vines. Pretty much everybody donated some blood to this cache. And what a cache it is. If any of you have done this or plan to do this, please drop me a line to let me know if you've ever seen a bigger cache container because I haven't, not even close. I can't say more than that other than to say that this container's not getting muggled, ever. Not without some heavy equipment. Unfortunately, a nest of wasps had taken up residence on the giant container. I saw the wasps and, being more scared of wasps than anything in the world, invoked the "if you can see the cache, you can claim the cache" rule and sent Fish in to sign the log. While there, Fish found, in the biggest cache container ever, the biggest travel bug ever. "Pet Rock" is just that, a giant rock with a bug glued to it. Fish, none to bright sometimes, picks the thing up and intends to haul it the tenth of a mile out to claim it. After about 5 steps of carrying the 50lb rock, he decides better and puts it back, stirring up the wasps and sending me scurrying back to the van (well, people my size don't really "scurry" but I did waddle faster than normal.)

Next up was our second hard cache of the day, "Jog P.S. This one's for you." It's supposed to be one star easier than It!, but it completely evaded us. We looked everywhere for about an hour, down to individually checking leaves on the bush that our GPS told us it was inside. Mad Mike and Ashlynne somehow got it into their heads that it "jog" was code in someway for an offset cache and started going all DaVinci Code on us with the clues. After about an hour, we DNF'd it and moved on.

Just down the road from "Jog" was "See Rock City." Pretty simple P&G here. None of us but Fish even left the car.

Next is "We've got top men working on it." Nothing much to say here. Quick grab off the road.

Our final cache was "Robert Johnson was Not Here." I'm excited about this one, being a huge Robert Johnson fan. The location is just bizarre. I don't know how to describe it. I wish we'd gotten pictures. It was kind of a crossroads, but with little turnoffs and turnarounds paved all around it. It looked like the paving crew dropped acid before doing it. Anyway, fairly easy cache to find once we could take our eyes off the mess that was the road.

It even inspired me for something to do with a TB I had lying around the house waiting on a mission. Meet Travelin' Bug Blues

He should be in Wabbit Season sometime this week as I sent him home with Fish to be placed there.

But the story doesn't end there. On Sunday, we went to the Middle Tennessee Geocacher's Club event in Chapel Hill and met a lot of nice folks, including Monkeybrad and our favorite cache hider and honorary Zen Bassmaster Scoot the Frog (who is much too sweet to be saddled with that ignomy but we've given it to her anyway). Not a lot to report here other than Brad took pity on us and took a group of us (not just Zen Bassmasters) who had DNF'd "Jog" and helped us out. Evil. Pure evil. He seems like a nice enough guy to talk to but trust me. This cache proves he's evil. Not evil on the level of the talking dogmatic asparagus, but evil nonetheless. If you take our advice and come do It!, do this one too. They together represent the heart of evil among Tennessee caches.

Next week we have a Huntsville run planned. We're going to hit Thornton Research Park, which we've heard from some of our Bama folks is one of Huntsville's more evil caches. Should be fun. It all culminates in the North Alabama Meet and Greet. With my plans for the Dark Tower cache I plan to pick the little hobbity brains of the Fellowship for ideas. See you next week.

-Gryph