We Went On a Drive Toward…

The girls and I left before sunrise on Thursday morning. We pointed south and kept going for a while, turning a little bit east by San Marcos. Unexpectedly thick fog slowed our progress. The rising sun made the drive less nerve-racking even though visibility was still bad. Our first stop was exactly where you want to be on a densely foggy morning: a cemetery in DeWitt County. A bison on the fence was enough to get us moving again. Normally, we would have stopped in the county for two caches as per the Texas Two-Step, but there was only one Non-Traditional in the county, and it happened to be close to a planned destination for the next day. We opted to let it wait and continued onward into the fog.

Victoria was much easier; we stopped in one cemetery for both our caches. First was a Multi with tombstone art functioning as the redirector. We were leery of doing it at first because a maintenance crew was working nearby, but we figured they were far enough away, and we wouldn’t be very long anyway. We were wrong. We had to wander around for a bit to find the correct stone, long enough that the crew noticed us going back and forth. We found what we needed and then corrected the coordinates to lead to a nearby fencepost. As my daughter made the find and was opening and signing it, a golf cart drove up and stopped. One of the two men inside asked if we were looking for something and needed help. I replied that we were fine and just passing through, looking at interesting stones. We chatted back and forth, but they eventually asked if something was wrong with the fencepost. They hadn’t been menacing or pressuring, but they were insistent enough that I knew I’d have to give them a good reason for our presence. Taking the risk, I explained geocaching and how we were looking for the grave so we could find the cache. They’d never heard of it and found it interesting. It all worked out nicely. Once they were assured we weren’t up to anything questionable, they left. We popped over to the other side of the cemetery for a Traditional, this time unmolested by curious onlookers, and then were off again.

We hit Port Lavaca, and I took them to the same Virtual cache I had gotten there at the Halfmoon Reef Lighthouse. It was a piece of cake to log it, though it brought a couple of grimaces with it as well. From there, we went to another cemetery, a small patch of graves mostly remembered for being the final resting place of the wife of a Texas Ranger I had never heard of. We then cut the corner of neighboring Refugio County to grab a couple more cemetery caches.

We stopped in Aransas County for a Traditional with a view of the Gulf of Mexico and a Letterbox Cache that finished off the county. While passing through Rockport, my courthouse senses led me to a brand-new courthouse I had never seen before, a momentary distraction on the way to Aransas Pass in San Patricio County.

We drove onto the ferry over to Port Aransas. A ten-minute crossing was the difference between San Patricio County and Nueces County. Luck guided us to a Traditional and EarthCache placed right on top of one another. It was easy enough to make our finds, and then we took a break from running and gunning for a bit to visit the Farley Boat Works. Why? Because it was founded by their great-great-great-uncles Fred and Barnard Farley. We took some time to learn a bit about wooden boat making (specifically Farley boats) and the history of the company. We had a lovely time, though I regretted that we had not made the trip before their great-grandmother (the one who told us about her great-uncles) died. She would have loved to hear that the girls had seen the place with their own eyes. Once we took the ferry back, we grabbed a couple of caches in Aransas Pass and went north. The day was starting to get late, so we made a straight shot toward Floresville, moving one county to the next day’s itinerary. We stopped in Beeville for a couple of caches in a park before shooting off for a dinner Event.

We made it in time to have Tex-Mex with cachers who had gotten to town before us. We chatted with both new and old faces for a while before stuffing enchiladas into our mouths. We were tired. We had had a full day and had another one on deck for the morrow, so we headed for our hotel. After taking showers and making plans for the morning, we all went to bed. And when we awoke the next morning, we arose, shook off the cobwebs, and headed off again for …