The quest for counties continues apace. It could continue more swiftly, but my hours are somewhat limited (after work), and my travel companions aren’t quite as aggressive as others I’ve traveled with. Even if time wasn’t an issue, I can’t exactly expect them to get up in the early morning darkness so we can hurl ourselves into the night as I am known to do. But since we’re going places so close to home—closer than I’ve been in a long time—we don’t really have to. An afternoon and evening, aided by the long summer days, can get us pretty far.
We jetted to Johnson City and Fredericksburg a couple of days ago. I knew of an easy non-Traditional, the bonus cache for an Adventure Lab series, near the Blanco County Courthouse. Unfortunately, the bonus cache had gone missing. While the girls walked around and got the Labs, I reached out to the CO and got permission to replace it. By the time they returned, there was a cache waiting to be signed. For a Traditional, we shot over to the childhood home of Johnson City‘s most famous resident, President Lyndon Johnson. Behind the laundry shed out back of it, we found an ammo can waiting. We continued to the park across from the Gillespie County Courthouse for a Virtual. The Virtual involved many questions, but I still had the answers from when I had found it years before. I happily gave the answers to my caching daughter because she and her sister had been instrumental in getting them in the first place! After that, we grabbed an unremarkable LPC before getting cold drinks and heading home. My only regret was that all the places that sold peaches were closed.
Yesterday, we managed to hit Bell, Milam, and Lee Counties. Not having to worry about county seats meant that we were able to skirt the edges of the counties more than I had before. It also meant I was driving a lot of back roads I had never touched the first time. I remarked that I had driven all over the state and seen all these counties, but I was seeing them anew because of these different routes. I only needed one daily cache, but since I was going to a bunch of new ones outside my regular hunting grounds, why not load up? We hit a couple of cemeteries and one of the best rest stops in Texas for Traditionals, and some dirt roads and a mine for a Letterbox Hybrid, a Mystery, and a Multi-cache. And we’ve still got a little more time. Let’s see how many more counties we can pick up before they have to go home!
Geocaching While Black 