Another small-town courthouse which, like Decatur, was neither bad nor good. Perfectly adequate is a thing. I thought that Forest might be a city of chickens, much like Winnfield with pigs and Marysville with squirrels (Meridian was supposed to be a city of carousel horses, but I only saw one while I was there). I noticed two or three painted chicken statues, but by the time I really registered them, I was already on the way out of town, and it wasn’t worth turning around for, especially since I already felt like I was running behind.
I managed to find a keybox on a roadside sign with a hint involving fruit that still doesn’t make sense, but I was so hot when I found it. And by “hot,” I mean angry. I had just attempted to find a so-called “park and grab” at a ranger station in the Bienville National Forest at a display of old machinery. I spent about 15-20 minutes looking for that thing and I left it missing the same clue I didn’t have when I started my search. I read through previous logs and tried to parse out comments, but ultimately no joy. If you’re going to call something a park and grab, it should actually be one! Especially when you’re claiming if for something so close to a major highway! People are traveling here!
Once I had finally fulfilled my obligations in the county, I crossed a bridge to get back on I-20 and saw an early morning traffic jam in the direction I was headed. I figured that any hope of keeping to my original timetable was done so I would just do what I could. I traditionally run with some kind of timetable, but having a hard stop time made it that much more important. I could often save time here and there with quick finds that could shave a few minutes here or there, but there something about this area’s cleverly camouflaged or unmaintained or straight-up missing caches that was slowing me down, especially in places that don’t have all that many caches in the first place. But still I pressed on, bound for the borders of…
Geocaching While Black 