Wednesday October 6, 2010
Between daytime appointments and a dinner, I had a few free hours, and my geo-friend Chipmunx was able to meet me, take me around to see some sights, and grab a bunch of geocaches. In a whirlwind tour of the western Raleigh suburbs, I was able to grab 8 of her 10 geocache hides, stop by the barn where she stables her horse, Duke, and make a few more finds before heading back for dinner. If Grace had been with me at the barn to meet Duke, I don't think she ever would have left. I know she would have gotten a kick out of an ancient little horse named Toby. Grace loves horses, and the place would have seemed like heaven on earth to her. Which, now that I think about it, it seemed awfully nice to me too.
After dinner, I got back to the hotel and was able to catch the last half of the Phillies opening game of the NLDS series, and was amazed to see Roy Halladay throw a no-hitter. This on top of the perfect game he threw earlier this season.
I was tired at this point, having gotten up at 4:30am in order to make my 7:00am flight, but as I was getting ready for bed, I got a text from Chipmunx that a new cache had been published right near where I was staying. I loaded the coordinates she gave me into my GPS, put shoes on, and hot-footed it across the hotel parking lot to be First To Find on a cache hidden in a light skirt. When I pulled out the log sheet, I laughed out loud to see the name of the cache was "Glad You Came to Visit", published by her for my benefit. I feel a little cheesy about the FTF, but hey... Everyone should be lucky enough to have such thoughtful friends, and all hotels should have a cache in the parking lot for the travelling geocacher.
Thursday October 7, 2010
Thursday was another beautiful early fall day, with cool temperatures, sunny blue skies and a nice breeze. After getting more of those pesky morning appointments o
ut of the way, I was able to get back out with Chipmunx for some more geocaching. Knowing that I only had a few hours before catching a dinnertime flight home, she suggested that we do a section of the American Tobacco Trail that she had not done yet. This trail is a wide flat cinder-paved trail through pine forests and cedar swamps. The trail, which extends well beyond the 4 miles we planned to do, has caches placed at near minimum separation (1/10th of a mile, or 528 feet), which means maybe 7 or 8 caches per mile, all located very close to the trail. It would give me the opportunity to blow away my biggest caching day in a very short amount of time. On the way to the trail, we drove through downtown Apex (such as it is) and got a webcam cache for me, my first.The stroll on the trail turned out to be a wonderful walk, with good company and conversation, and about 25 geocaches. Almost all were small "bison tubes" hanging in trees. Most were fairly easy to find, but some were a pretty good challenge. The trail itself was very nice, and it was fun seeing the sights, scrambling up and down embankments, darting in and out of state game lands while making jokes about not getting shot, and just generally having a great time. After completing the trail section, we drove along a nearby road picking up 5 more park n grabs so that I could have a day of over 30 finds (my total ended up being 31 - my previous high had been 12, accomplished twice, including the day before).
Even with the caching, I had enough time to return the rental car, catch my flight easily (on board Southwest's "Shamu" plane, painted like a killer whale) and be home shortly after 8pm. It was a good trip. I got all my appointments in, and still had time to spend some very nice time with a good friend, and get 43 caches in 2 days to boot. I found it hilarious when I got home that after logging all my finds, NC has become my second best state in terms of finds, beating Delaware at the moment, 43 to 41. I think Delaware needs more caches closer together.
Thanks to Chipmunx for the hospitality.
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