Around And Around We Go

I planned to get up early on Saturday to start on an adventure. I totally overslept, but not too late, meaning it was still cool when things started. I met Razorbackgirl at Lake Georgetown to begin an epic adventure: working Carrot Killer‘s new D5/T5 Virtual. All you have to do to earn it is to get a picture of yourself at each of the mile markers on the surrounding trail, the Goodwater Loop. Of course, it’s a twenty-six-mile hike. One of the mile markers is missing, so you have to find the twenty-five remaining ones. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right? On paper, perhaps. In reality? She and I parked cars at two different trailheads five miles apart and then started walking from one to the other.

My first concern was making sure I got a cache for the day, but I needn’t have worried about that. LadyBlackCat (who I sadly haven’t seen in a little while) has long been the acknowledged dominator of this park. She has caches placed all over the trails, dwarfing the number placed by other cachers, both current and former. Indeed, we had found a cache at the trailhead before we even stepped on the path. And, as Razorbackgirl and I hiked, we picked up more as we passed them.

Not all of them, of course. That would have taken all day just for our stretch of the loop. But we grabbed as we were passing and when we remembered. We only had one DNF, which I suspect is actually missing because it was a simple cache in a tree “where you would expect,” except it wasn’t. But that didn’t matter.

We walked and occasionally panted through the rough bits. Most importantly, we talked about all the stuff and things (and some things and stuff as well). We talked about some of the rough patches (mostly stupid work stuff) I’ve had in the last couple of weeks. We talked about the nonprofit organization she has been forming from scratch for the past year. We talked about how I should finish solving some puzzles in the area because a lot of their solutions were along the next part of the loop we plan to do. A little bit of time was spent talking about our respective plans for the Texas Challenge in a few weeks, with some mention of GeoLeap in a few days. (A Leap Day Mega in my proverbial backyard? You bet I’m going!) We definitely talked about how hiking all this in July during the high summer would be miserable. I even mentioned how, with all the caching we’ve done together, I have a ton of photos of her finding and signing caches! She made me promise to keep the bad ones locked away, and so I have, but the most important thing was that, after all the chatting, snacking, sweating, and hydrating …

… we made our way to the first five markers! Our proverbial dogs were barking, but we got the proverbial ’er done. A lovely way to spend a cool (though unseasonably warm) morning. And, to top it all off, we finished it all off with lunch with the Carrot himself! W00T!