Alright, I can’t remember the last time I saw a courthouse quite like this. It was quite unexpected, especially the lighting. I don’t know if it was supposed to be red, white, and blue for independence Day or if it was a multi-colored for the end of Pride Month, but either way kudos for Sterling. If you look really, really closely, you might notice a few people hanging out in front on the steps at the entrance. It’s a weird thing to see a group of friends in a random place, just talking and laughing, after the last year we’ve had. I’m not even going to lie: it’s been a long time since I’ve heard such a thing and it was nice. There are a lot of personal touches in the world that I (and I suspect we) have missed. The joy of friendship, whether our own or others, has been sorely lacking. A little bit of laughter, even if it was second hand, was quite a happy balm. Or some kind of crap like that.
So, after 1,500 miles of driving, this is my first lamppost cache. The convenience store it was behind was closed. Unfortunately, so was everything else. I got to town just in time for everything to close. And do I mean “just in time.” I pulled into somewhere to get food six minutes after they closed and, though the town was just large enough to maybe have something of a night life, it turned out that it didn’t. Oh, well. I was here and I was ready to shut down. I’d been going for about 32 hours and I didn’t have a lot more in me at this point. Times like this I think that this is the great tragedy of my travels. I rarely travel with others. In fact, on two of my trips that I’ve written about I’ve gone with people, one when I did all the driving, the other doing none. At times I wish I could roll with someone who could do some of the driving so I could get a little sleep on the road. Do you have any idea how much I could do if I didn’t have to stop at night? Twenty-five counties or more in a day? The very idea of going out and coming back with 50 or 60 or even 75 counties from a long weekend? How intoxicating! But not this trip. I found myself a Wally World, which wasn’t really all that hard because it was right next to the previously mentioned closed fast food. I got a good location not too close to the light of a lamppost, and just stopped. I closed my eyes and slept. I got a few hours as I am apt to do on the road and found myself awake before sunrise. With a stretch and an offer of my water to the county, I was ready to move again. I started the engine and set off for my first stop of the new day…
Geocaching While Black 