GW7 – Home at last
Strangely enough, after driving around all day on Sunday, we woke to find ourselves in Tennessee again. Tired, bedraggled and confused. Ok, that was me anyway. Our plan was to nick North Carolina and Virginia and head home. And it was a good plan. A grand plan even. Until the rains hit. And we were somewhere in…um…Kentucky?…no wait, that was yesterday maybe. Which is why I was very confused to find myself leaving Pisgah National Forest.
At any rate we woke up in Tennessee, drove around in a few more states, I fell asleep again and woke up in North Carolina as pbump screeched to a halt nearly mashing me (and the laptop on my…lap) into the back of the driver’s seat. “We’re in North Carolina, by the way,” he said glancing at me in the rear view mirror. “Is there a cache here?” I asked groggily. “Dunno, you’ve got the map.” His geo-sense was ON because there was indeed a cache in that particular cemetery. Go figure. It also afforded yet another wonderful view and gave me time to become coherent enough to resume my job as navigator. Because at some point I did want to get home and being coherent while reading the map was definitely going to help me acheive that goal.
we saw a field of micros and at least one traditional cache on the screen. We hit the traditional which was in a place you may not normally expect to find an ammo can. And it was a darn good thing it clearly said AMMO CAN in the description, otherwise, well I’ll just leave that to your imagination, for we are a motley crew of cachers. Which was terribly exciting and cool. Especially since I had a few horse shoes I was trying to find homes for. And the micros…well…any micro called DEMON CHICKEN is all right in my book.
and the container wasn’t exactly a micro, it was a large purple bison tube. and by large, I mean significantly bigger than a test tube. Oh yeah, and at night the Demon Chicken’s eyes light up. Sadly we didn’t have time to stay until night to catch the full glory of the Demon Chicken (can you tell I like to say that). Demon Chicken, DE-MON CHICKEN, DEMON CHICK-ENNNN!!!
Ok. Now that it’s out of my system for now, back to the narrative. Somewhere around 3:00 it became obvious that we were going to hit Charleston a little later than we’d thought. But that was pretty much ok because we were in the midst of some beautifully lit mountains (ok for me anyway, i wasn’t driving)
and soil so dark and rich it made me want to go home and putter in the garden. [where we have significantly less exciting soil comprised of mostly clay and random rocks]. At the next to last cache stop of the day we encountered only our second caching critter of the entire expedition.Only he wasn’t in the tree when I saw him. Mr. Snake was in fact beside the trail. Which means we probably walked right past him on our way TO the cache. Upon spotting Mr. Snake I did what I typically do in said situations.
I shouted, “Holy #$^&!!!!” and did what I like to call my Touchdown Dance – it’s a high stepping affair and I move rapidly for about 3 yards. Quite a sight. So, after my heart stopped racing I did what any normal person with a sweet camera would do, I went to take pictures. Which is when Mr. Snake headed to the tree. And i was not the only one in persuit of a great shot to post on MAGPI. pbump was right beside me….
being backed up by Knight Who Says Ni. Because, we are, if nothing else, a TEAM. And pbump had the keys to the car which is why we also did not leave him in the ditch at the final cache, even though it appears through photographic evidence the Mrs. Bump considered it.
For the complete story, check out the gallery. DEMON CHICKEN!!!!
post script: we arrived in Charleston, WV around 9:30 where KWSN’s husband was waiting on her. He kindly transferred my luggage to the not-so-Might Ion which then refused to start. Not that I was shocked or anything. I’d abandonded the car for several days and it was wet, wet, wet out. Which generally means I have to wait for the stupid security failure to reset so the car can start. But you have to wait 10 minutes and apparently I wasn’t waiting 10 minutes. Or I wasn’t holding my hand just right or perhaps I didn’t ask nicely enough because it wasn’t until 10:30 that the *&#$%^*#@$ car started. I think it was the threat that did her in. I said that if she did not start and I had to sleep on the sofa in KWSN’s office, when I got back to Morgantown the Ion’s days were over.
chris on May 29th 2009 in Geocaching