Es Gibt Immer Einen Friedhof

A couple of days ago, while in Fredericksburg, I visited a cemetery. This is nothing new, considering that my official cache for Gillespie County was in a cemetery. In this case, I opted for an older cemetery in the middle of town as opposed to the Catholic cemetery on the edge.

As always, as I looked over the neatly arranged rows supporting the stereotype of Teutonic orderliness, I was reminded that every cemetery is the same in a different way. A couple of maintenance workers were mowing the grass, but otherwise, there was just the silence of the stones. I entered through the front gate, and two Adventure Labs were waiting within a hundred feet, part of a series devoted to the historic cemeteries of Fredericksburg. I stopped and took a moment to find their foci and log them both, then drove a little deeper in. A small section of the cemetery, populated with “newer” graves from the mid-twentieth century, had a stone retaining wall around the edge of it. In the beginning, I searched the stone wall on the wrong side, but soon enough, I found the right side and signed the cache.

There was a second cache in the cemetery that I had originally decided to pass on because it was too near the maintenance workers, and I didn’t want any attention. I took a turn on the paths to swing by it just to make sure, and it turned out that they were not as close as I thought. I jumped out of the car and, avoiding a couple of wasps, managed to find the container. However, the log was missing, and I didn’t have a spare one on me. I went ahead and logged it and let the CO know that a little bit of maintenance was required, but I have to come back out to Fredericksburg again in a couple of days, so if I remember, I’ll do something about it.

With the cemetery cleared out of caches, I set off for home. I know that this is not as exciting as being in some random cemetery in Nebraska, Illinois, or Arizona, but until I can get back out on the road again in earnest, I’ll take what I can get. Besides, I bet the old families of Fredericksburg appreciated a visitor.