Shades of Blair Witch - Kinda

Blair Witch nearby?

August 12, 2012 - I started out my Sunday by spending two hours on the phone with a few nice gentlemen in India.  No I am not a phone sex goddess.  I was on the phone trying to get some help with my dead-in-the-water computer.  After talking to four different help desk people in four different departments it was determined that it PROBABLY is my video card.  The nice gentlemen offered to order (for a fee of course since NATURALLY my computer is out of warranty) a new part.  I respectfully declined thinking I could pick one up quickly at a brick and mortar store nearby.  The problem with that turned out to be that those stores are more interested in having you buy a new one that helping you repair on old one.  No stores locally had what I needed in stock so I was forced to order it online anyway.  So WHY in the heck are we going through all this fal-de-rol when this blog is supposed to be about geocaching?  I am (as the lawyers would say) trying to establish my mindset when I set out to cache that day.  I was pretty well squelched mentally, emotionally, physically, morally and within the depth of my soul.  Computer problems just plain bum me out.

So dear husband had proposed we again go out geocaching/wine-tasting which really needs it's own moniker, don't you think?  How about geo-drinking or Cache on the Vine?  Anyway, I'll think about that.  Since I was occupied for most of the morning we couldn't start out until after noon.  That made our choices of where to cache and then go wine tasting pretty narrow.  Off to Mt. Airy again we go.  This time we decided to go to Elk Run winery and picked caches nearby.  The first cache I chose was in the Gillis Falls area of Mt. Airy.  It's unbelievable how much we second guess ourselves as to where to park.  It's like a scene from It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  We drive by the "parking area" twice because it just didn't look like where we need to be.  In any event, we finally ended up parking there and walked down the trail.  The GPS had us about .5 miles away.  Part of the way there I accidentally lost the cache and had to restart my GPS.  When I did that, I noticed there was ANOTHER cache about 150 ft away!  Excelsior!  Had to grab that one, right?  We backtracked a bit and walked down a side path towards what looked like a large VERY old brick fireplace. This is the Blair Witch part (which, I actually have never seen except for some clips).  Anyway, it was spooky to see this intact fireplace in the middle of the woods without ANYTHING around it (like, say, walls and a roof).  The cache was RIGHT in the open so no hunting for this one.  It is definitely a newbie cache.  We took a small shell and left a Barbie notebook.

Yeah, I felt safe on this path

We left the fireplace behind and traveled on to the next cache (which is actually the cache we were heading for).  The trail was QUITE muddy and had pretty large pools of water in some areas.  We walked on ahead and started to encounter old cabins(?) off the trail to the right.  They were abandoned and its appears they are riddled with bullet holes.  Lovely.  I don't know why they were there or what they were, but I am curious about that.  Sad that they aren't either restored or just plain torn down.  They look so, well, creepy just standing in the woods abandoned and shot up.  I'm pretty sure they are bullet holes because we heard bullets being fired pretty much the first hour we were in the woods.  Rapid fire, almost like target practice, but who knows?

Under the rubble

The next cache was pretty easy to find under an area of rubble.  Probably one of the cabins that had been almost completely demolished.  You could still see the foundation underneath.  The cache was under a plank of rubble.  The problem with its location was that there was a HUGE swarm of mosquitoes guarding it like it was the lost ark of the covenant or something.  Dear husband couldn't stick his hand in there because he is TRULY allergic to bug stings of all kinds.  So I quickly stuck my hand and there to grab the cache.  I know I say this every single time, but I really, really wish people would try a little harder with the swag. The CRAP people leave behind is stuff I would just toss in the trash.  I took a small plastic luggage tag and left a sandwich bag of NASA swag.  Oh, hey, how about Swig and Swag -- my name for geocaching and wine tasting?  I kinda like it!

Would you like a glass or three?

So on our way leaving the area, we hear a person crashing through the underbrush from above us.  Then a voice says, "I bet you all just found what I'm looking for."  It was another geocacher!  Fancy that!  That hasn't happened to us before.  I told her that it was pretty easy, but I wouldn't spoil it for her. She also mentioned that the "nano in the woods" cache just down the trail is really easy.  I figured we had time for one more cache before our wine tasting so both husband and I decided to try for it.

Our well-earned picnic

So here was the problem.  The cache the other geocacher was talking about was NOT the one I had downloaded to my GPS and I was confused thinking that the one I did download was the one she was talking about.  So we headed off in the direction my GPS was telling me and I figured this would take just a couple minutes and we'd go.  Well, the cache we were headed for had a difficulty of FOUR STARS and was a bison tube (think 1 1/2 inch tube) hidden in the middle of the woods.  I didn't realize my error until we had been searching for awhile.  Dear husband wasn't to be deterred though since we'd already started this search.  We read all the entries (or so we thought), the hint (none), the description (not many clues) and still we could not find it.  We probably spent close to an hour looking for it, and ultimately had to go away with a DNF which was very sad.  :(  Oh well!  Maybe next time as the Dodgers would say (the Brooklyn ones, not the L.A. ones which I think are doing quite well this year).

And so it goes.  We got to Elk Run JUST IN TIME to taste six wines, buy a bottle of Riesling, a chunk of Gouda and some french bread.  We went out to the outdoor tables and enjoyed our time sitting by the vineyards.
 
"Oh, by the way," I said to dear husband, "Did you tell the boy (our son) where we were going?"  "No I thought you did."  "Nope."  "Oh well, he's 14, he probably won't even leave his room.  I doubt if he'll know we even left."  "Touche."