I have children who live in another city. Sometimes I go to see them, and sometimes, they come to see me. Every now and then, I meet them somewhere in the middle, pick them up, and bring them back to my home. Conveniently, there is a town about halfway between Austin and Longview that serves as a reasonably good meeting point with food, gas, and other goods that may be needed. Depending on the route I take to get there, I even see old friends in Franklin, Marlin, or Groesbeck. This also means that on those trips, I have a chance once again to cache outside of my normal stomping grounds. Of course, this means being subject to the whims of foreign places.
How many times have I stopped in a roadside cemetery in some little town I’d never heard of for a find? Or for a DNF? It’s always a pain to be short on time, rushing to a destination, and not make the find, necessitating another stop. Sometimes I’ve found LPCs in the most questionable parking lots or hanging from the most remote fences. A tree in the middle of nowhere? Or a bush? Never anything especially difficult or clever because I rarely have time for such caches. You would think that having driven all over the Midwest, South, and Northwest, I’d be accustomed to these lonely roadside treasures in far-flung places. Yet still, every one sparks a little bit of wonder and fear in that bit of isolation between the world I know well and the world I’m at least familiar with. I’ve been all over Texas (though, as the challenge has reminded me, not nearly everywhere) and trod these paths specifically, over and over. Still, I find undiscovered bits of an unfamiliar world. I can’t tell you if it’s something universal to every land or peculiar to Texas because it’s so big. Perhaps it’s a little of both. Either way, once again, I prepare myself for the ritual. I will set off into the outlying places to find a piece of unknown road and, if I am good or lucky or both, find a cache and play out my other ritual: inveni, inscripsi, reposui.
Or some kind of crap like that.
Geocaching While Black 