Drinking my Caches Goodbye

Sorry for being late with this week's post. I've had some real life stuff going on the last few days and haven't really felt like trying to be funny. This is going to be a relatively short post anyhow because, frankly, we didn't do much this week.

We wanted to run by Jack Daniels Distillery to do the tour because we have a bug that wants to be photographed with fire stations and we figured the little fire station they have at Jack Daniels is pretty unique and one they wouldn't get otherwise. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of caches in the general Lynchburg/Tullahoma/Fayetteville area that we haven't done yet. Also, we had Little Vorin with us again this week so we were doing low impact caches, shrinking our list even more.

Since my blog last week about having SO much fun riding with the kiddies, my kind loving friends (I take back none of the Judas references from last week) decided to move Little V's carseat into my van and let Tserof ride with his parents. Having ridden with Tserof many times in the past, I thought I got the best of the deal, took the hyper 4 year-old, and let Fish and Chri deal with "Too Much Information Man". My only caveat was that we would NOT be playing "The Wheels on the Bus" or "Little Bunny Foo Foo." My car, my music, meaning Little V got to listen to my MP3 mix the whole day, ranging from John Prine to Iron Maiden (more on Iron Maiden later).

First up, on the way to Jack Daniels for the tour, was Fork in the Road. Not too much to report on this one. Little micro out in the middle of nowhere. Found it pretty easily. Little V was not impressed as he is not a fan of caches that don't contain toys for him to loot. Signed the log and moved on.

Second was On Liberty Hill. Little bit of a hill on this one but a beautiful area. This one was an ammo box so Little V got his toy finally. Don't remember what he took, just that he wanted everything. I had Little V listening to Iron Maiden's "Wasted Years" on the way over and spent the whole drive to it trying to teach him to do the "forked finger" sign, scream "Iron Maiden!" and bang his head for his mother. Strangely, Little V, the child who will talk the ears of friends, family, strangers, dogs, and walls if given the chance, picked this moment to become shy, meekly squeaking "ironmaiden" before scurrying behind me. Pitiful. That boy isn't nearly metal enough. Fortunately, I've got the rest of the day to work on him.

Third was Lost Creek. Beautiful area by the lake. By now, Tserof was doing something annoying (don't remember what. With Tserof, it all kind of runs together) so we threatened to throw him in the lake. Since he was riding with Fish and Chri, I wasn't worried about getting water in my car and was all for the idea. No one else seemed to want to help me and since Tserof weighs more than me, I couldn't lift him alone. We dropped a couple of bugs in the cache, got Little V his toy, and moved on. Little V still refused to do the Iron Maiden! bit, but did seem to enjoy ZZ Top (although teaching him the lyrics to "Tush" to sing for his granny didn't work out. Pity...)

Next up was Anderton Bridge at the Bend. Found the cache pretty easily, although Ashlynne dropped it and nearly lost it in the lake. Climbing down to retrieve it was the worst part of this one. We weren't sure she was going to get back up and jokingly told her she might have to swim over to the nearby pier to be picked up. She was not amused. By this time, I was mostly insane, having listened to about 10 miles of Little V and Mad Mike play the "stop copying me" game which, oddly, sounded like a typical episode of Hannity and Colmes. I tried to distract him by getting him to sing "I Ain't Drunk, I'm Just Drinkin'" with me, but I don't think Little V's an Albert Collins fan. Pity.

At this point, Chri felt it necessary to point out to me that kids often repeat things that are said around them. "I would hope so", I thought. Otherwise, all my work here is for naught...

Next up was Tims Ford Dam Overlook which, oddly enough, overlooks Tims Ford Dam. Easy cache. Right by the cars. Nothing of too much interest here, other than Mad Mike hiding the baseball that Little V found in another cache, then giving it to him later as a gift, much to V's delight. Glad to see I'm not the only one trying to scar the child's mental health.

Next was Wayside Creek. This one gave us some fits finding it, but we finally did. Dropped in a couple of more bugs from our bug hunt last week and moved on.

Finally, was our trip to Jack Daniels. Unfortunately, we somehow forgot that it was Labor Day weekend and, on top of that, all of the people who were in Shelbyville for the Walking Horse Celebration had apparently decided to drop in too. If there was ever a definition of "too many muggles", this was it. We decided to skip the tour for this week and just hunt for the cache. I did stop by one of the gift shops to get some stuff for a couple of new bugs that I planned to release. More on that later.

Our GPS units both decided to get drunk off the whiskey fumes and give us crazy coordinates in opposite directions. We walked around for a while, made friends with a kitty cat that apparently lives in the area and joined us for the cache (until Little V dropped him on his head, at which point he decided to try his luck with the other tourists).

We tried to be as discreet as possible, making our way casually through the ten gallon cowboy hats and studded boots (did I mention I hate horse show people?). Finally, we rebooted both of our GPSr and at least got them to point the same way. Took us a few minutes to find the cache, but we finally did.

From there, we went back to Fayetteville to place our own cache, the second in the History of Lincoln County series. It's GCY3FD for anyone who wants to check it out. We're pretty proud of our hide here so we're curious to see if it poses any challenge to some of our "pro cacher" friends from the Dixie Cachers board. Bring it on, Frodo. We may or may not give you a bit of a search, but I promise it's not a key holder under a lamp skirt (it's also not a 400 ft straight down hike, for the record).

Once we got it hid, we dropped a couple of bugs in it, including one of my new ones called B-Double-E-Double-R-U-N. I'd give you the link, but gc.com is down apparently so go search it yourself if you're interested.

Again, not much to the day. Probably not one of my best posts and I apologize for that. Next week I've been promised it will be adults only and we'll be doing some harder caches, including one 4.5 difficulty cache, GCK1DT. Should make for interesting blogging.

Stay tuned.