Attack! Always Attack!

We converged on a restaurant in Georgetown for some breakfast. There is a monthly gathering of cachers that meets early on the first Saturday of each month, so we all dropped in to it because it made for a good starting place. After some breakfast tacos, a hearty handshake and chat with a German cacher who just happened to be passing through, and some laughs with the car club that meets there at the same time who were outnumbered for the first time, we mounted up in vehicles and headed back to Granger. The Scorpion Expeditionary Force, in the guise of the April Fools (AF), was attacking more of the Geoarts we had begun a month before!

There was nothing new or innovative about our cache finds. We had found many similar ones on our last trip to the area: cap-n-caps, camoed pill bottles, DNA tubes. Just as before, we spent quite a bit of time replacing DNA tubes crumbling from the unrelenting harshness of the Texas sun. A few telephone poles had recently been replaced, probably victims of recent tree-splitting weather. For those, as per CO instructions, we placed new tubes to be found. I must admit that the part of me that dislikes zombie caches felt a bit of pique. Cache maintenance is part of the price of owning caches and, outside of the occasional log or similar, should be done by the CO. In this case, I felt the need to let it slide. There were few we had to replace (about a dozen crumbling containers and a couple on newly erected poles), and the CO had recently been going through chemo so he had good reason to not do replacement runs out here.

Of course, there were random oddities to be found all about: alpacas; the newborn donkey, umbilical cord still attached, walking around with the cattle; dogs penned up in a barn, going nuts at the sight of us eating lunch; a well-known Doppler radar station. Some of our time was spent between caches, discussing events (and a little gossip) of the Geocaching world. During the rest, we dodged greenbrier and poison ivy to get our quarries.

We pressed on as the day grew warmer and the Spear of Apollo began, but ultimately failed, to threaten. We grew heavier each moment of the day with the accumulated dust of Williamson and Milam. We even endured the unthinkable, using a miniature metal detector in an attempt to find some bottlecap caches. By that point, it was late in the day and we decided to call it all so we could get dinner. I had already surpassed cache 6000 out there! We also received good news. Our friend’s chemotherapy worked! His final tests put him in the clear!

I was even convinced to take a bluebonnet picture! Yes, they’re silly and pointless but, because of both birth and residence, contractually obligated! We all walked away from the day with 270 finds (plus or minus, depending some previously or newly found on an individual basis)! Hail the conquering heroes!