It Had To Do

The goal for my weekend was to get out of the city onto some back roads somewhere to just grab a bunch of caches and enjoy some solitude. Unfortunately, that was not to be. The Austin area had much needed rain over the weekend, far-reaching enough that no small drive would be enough to get away from it. It wasn’t heavy rain by any stretch of the imagination, but it was enough that I didn’t relish the idea of mud and grime on a back road. I’m not the cacher I once was that would let neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night keep him from his appointed cache. Thinking back though, I’m not sure I was never that guy. I can think of lots of times that all those things put the kibosh on more serious adventure.

Anyway, Saturday I decided to at least get away from town. Some friends of mine invited me to dinner so I went out early and headed for the town nearest them, Dripping Springs (for those of you following this on a map, it’s about halfway out to Johnson City). This was fairly convenient because I’d been wanting a cache in the area for a while. There are challenges to find a cache in each of the 360 degrees around home. I’m four degrees short and one of them passes through the northern part of Dripping Springs. There are two caches in in close proximity and the right degree there so I figured it would be a perfect time to go grab one. One of them involved a hike and the other was on the back end of an event center parking lot. I chose the easier of the two. I also, it turned out, chose poorly. When I got to the right area, I parked and walked around back of the closed facility. I got to the back to find a fence between me and GZ, taunting me thirty feet away. I spent a few minutes with the maps and figured out the horrible truth: this one also involved a hike from a different location. I thought about it for a few minutes. I could have gone back to the car, gotten my collapsible ladder, and gone over the fences to get where I needed to go. However, I was attired as if I was on my way to a dinner party. I wasn’t in my tuxedo or anything, but I wasn’t looking to go climbing over fences either. I decided to let that one go for another day (I’ll be back with the ladder because that would be easier than the hike) and go get another one on my way out of town. I managed to find a bison in a tree (though, more correctly in this case, on the ground, fallen from a higher perch). Not what I had hoped for, but it was good enough for government work. I won’t complain.

Sunday was little better. I thought to drive up to Belton or maybe even Temple and go grab a few, but it was still wet and I was still weak. So I drove up to Round Rock and found a simple little bee-themed cache. No grand adventure there, just something I probably should saved for a weekday after work or something. But a cache is a cache is a cache. I guess I’ll have to wait for a drier weekend. If I’m lucky, it may even be cooler.