78. Bay City, Matagorda County

When I was really young, my grandparents brought me down to Bay City a few times. My grandmother had family in town so we would come to visit. I remember that it happened, but little else besides. To be fair, it’s been over 35 years since the last time I was here so even remembering it happened is probably an accomplishment in and of itself. I found one of those cool reliefs here but it also had a friend…

Found myself a Confederate column. I haven’t seen one of those in a while. I’m almost a little amazed it’s been so long actually. Then again, maybe some other locations cheap out on their monuments. Maybe other counties didn’t want to go through that expense, weren’t that attached with their Confederate legacies. But we are getting into East Texas now so I should begin expecting more of this.

The cache was a peacock based travel bug hotel. It’s cute and all, but I didn’t give it a favorite. If I had encountered this one earlier in my caching career, I wouldn’t have gone after it. It’s in an empty lot behind a gate, between two houses. It looks like somebody’s back yard almost. Somebody is even storing a riding mower there. This is exactly the kind of situation that makes me think I could get shot. And I’m not even talking about the immediate homeowners. They probably at least know that strangers come in there from time to time. It would be just my luck that another neighbor or just a good Samaritan passing by would see a black guy back in somebody’s yard, think I’m “trespassing”, and decide to intervene. Property rights, East Texas, race, irrationally strong support for the Second Amendment, and all of a sudden I’m looking down the barrel of a weapon. My point here (and I do have one) is that you have to think about your cache placement and how it might look to muggles. At the best of times this could get someone in really big trouble. For me, much more so. So cute cache, but not my favorite. And (just between you and me), this isn’t even the worst cache I’ll encounter today. But that’s yet to come. I grabbed a couple trackables and left a couple. I got back in the car and headed off towards…