Spirit of the Holidays

First off, this is going to be a pretty short entry this week because, frankly, I'm sick as a dog and missed about half the trip. For the record, don't geocache with bronchitis. Bad idea...

This week, we're doing a little more cache placing at Well's Hill Park. If you've been monitoring your weekly cache notifications, you've seen that there's been a flurry of activity in Lincoln County recently as the Zen Bassmasters (including new Bassmaster Froglegz) have taken it upon themselves to make Lincoln County a place worth coming to for geocachers. We've more than quadrupled the previous number of caches in the area (2 before we began placing) so if you've been looking for some virgin area to cache in, come here in a week or two when we get the last of the caches up. It'll be worth your time.

The main reason I wanted to get this week's entry, however short, in is to commemorate an extremely rare occasion. You've all heard the stories of the holiday spirit filling people from different, often warring backgrounds, who come together just once to break bread and share stories. From the pilgrims and indians at Thanksgiving to the warring armies singing christmas carols to each other across their trenches, it's all over the place, and it's all very nice.

But they ain't got nothing on us...

Don't believe me? Just take a look at this picture.



Yes, that is indeed the evil hobbit Bilbo pictured with our own Fish. No, we haven't taken up with the filthy little hairfoots and no we haven't given up our war to eradicate Middle Earth (or at least Northern Alabama) of their evil. But he did ask nicely for some help in locating a couple of our challenges and, in the spirit of the holidays, we decided to bring him along. Besides, we thought, if he fell to his death doing one of them, wouldn't it be better for us to be there to witness it, rather than just have to hear about it from others. Hooray!

Little did we know that Bilbo had hidden some caches of his own earlier in the week and had similar plans for us. Very interesting...

Again, not much to tell here. We found Bilbo's first cache easily enough and he had a good deal more trouble than we expected from one of my as-yet unpublished ones. Guess I need to bump the difficulty on that one a bit.

We walked on a bit more and watched Bilbo and Ashlynne both go after Mordor's Gauntlet #4: The Corrupted Dwarf. Both nearly fell but they located it eventually. No hobbity death for us today.

Beyond that... I can't really tell you. All I remember is a haze of burning lungs and hacking coughs. "You've got bronchitis?", Bilbo asked me. "What the hell are you doing out here today? Just when I thought you guys were getting smarter..."

I remember taking a travel bug to our "Underground Railroad TB Hotel" and dropping it off and then nearly dropping myself. Finally, I had to admit defeat and head back alone while the others went on. Hopefully Fish or Ashlynne will be willing to blog up the rest of the day. Heck, I'd even put up a blog from Bilbo. I'm such a whore...

I will leave you with the picture of one of our waterfall caches. These are absolutely beautiful caches (and another was found today so expect more). They're pretty hefty finds (unlike the hobbits, we rate our terrain fairly and these are legit 4s). But even if you don't attempt the caches, it's worth heading up the path to see them. We were bowled over since, a month ago, only a few of us knew this park existed and none of us knew about the waterfalls. So I leave you, for now, with those. Enjoy.