Friday afternoon, I left work for my daily cache. A bunch of Fizzy-hole filling caches had just published so I went out to find one (2.0/3.5) that would complete a loop for me. I didn’t find it, primarily because it had been raining all day and I couldn’t find something in a tree with water falling in my eyes. I ended up finding another one (2.0/2.5). It wasn’t the one I wanted, but it was the one closest to my car so I had both pole for retrieval and ladder for replacement easily available to give me an FTF for a cache placed in May.
This is, paradoxically, both the least important and most important thing to note.
I had business in Waxahachie on Saturday. Now, I could have driven the two and a half hours up, done what I needed to do, and then driven back. But have you met me? I had a bunch of caching stuff I “needed” to do in the area so I decided to make a day of it. I set off before sunrise up IH-35, driving past my normal turning point of Waco (where I usually turn to continue on to Longview) to points north. The interstate split to the east and west so I veered left, going a little west as the sun was rising. I watched the rolling fields go by as I continued on until I hit the outskirts of a city and, in due time, laid my eyes once again upon the topless towers of Fort Worth. I passed them up as it was not my actual goal. I did not stop until I reached Bridgeport in Wise County.
For a very long time, I’ve been working on a challenge, the I’ve Been Everywhere (Texas Edition) Challenge (I’ve mentioned it a few times in the past). I really just picked it up a long time ago and figured that I would complete it if I traveled around enough. About a year ago, I realized that I needed a couple dozen-ish more towns and dragging my daughters around the state to do the Texas County Challenge seemed like the perfect opportunity to go back to places and get them. Why does this matter though? Because four of my locations were around the DFW area. Since I was going up there, why not go ahead and grab them? That’s why I was at a church on the outskirts of Bridgeport on a surprisingly chilly morning taking a tin from the elbow of a tree. I only needed to be within three miles of town, but chose the easiest cache I could see on the map. While I was there, I noticed a couple of Adventure Lab locations on the grounds so I went ahead and did them real quick. Word to the wise: if you want people to read something off a building’s cornerstone, don’t make them push into high dense bushes to do to it! I didn’t opt to finish the series; they were spread around town and the town was having some kind of parade so I didn’t want to get involved with any of that (it’s not like it was Telluride or something). I hopped on a state highway going east and headed out of town.
I came to stop again in the old section of Justin in Denton County. Again, I only had to be within three miles of the town, but I noticed the most favorited cache in the area was low D/T so I went ahead to it. The businesses there didn’t open until lunchtime so I mostly had the block to myself. On the side of a winery, I found electrical boxes with a fake cabling pipe containing my quarry. I see why so many people liked it, but I’m a little harder to impress than that. I’ve considered something similar in the past but have never done it, thinking that it wouldn’t last long in the hard urban jungle that is Austin. I still don’t think I will, but at least I’ve seen actual proof that something like it might work better than I thought it would. Once again, I mounted up and continued east.
I only had to get within six miles of Krugerville, also in Denton County. Luckily, a major thoroughfare out of Justin passed a few miles south of town and had a plethora of challenges and caches along it. I picked up some challenges while I was there and then pulled into a gas station and grabbed the fruit of its lamppost to complete my work. It was also a good time to stop for lunch so I hit one of the many chain restaurants along the way, choosing one I had actually never been to before. It was alright for a chain, but there are local (to me) equivalents that are better for the same price point so it certainly didn’t exactly win me over. But it’s another option for when I’m out on the road so there’s that.
I kept going east and started to pull into walled neighborhoods. That’s how I knew I was north of Dallas. So many enclaves, walled off towns of their own trying to defend against invaders (or, in some cases, modernity or progression), but more likely just against taxes.
That’s how I ended up in Frisco, more specifically in Collin County. I needed something a little extra there. I had long ago gotten a Traditional back when I was doing the Texas County Challenge. I needed a Non-Traditional for the Texas Two Step though. Luckily there was a Virtual at a war memorial about a mile from the center of the city. Two birds, one stone. It was called a Sunny War Memorial because of the sundial on the top. As I read the dial’s statement that “[it] count[s] none but sunny hours,” I couldn’t help but think that “sans gnomon, not even that.” It was an old Virtual placed in 2002, and the key to claiming it was to list all the conflicts it commemorated, named in plates bolted on the base. There have been more conflicts since then and more plates have been added. The list had blossomed from the history of American warfare it was when the cache was made to a walk through memories of my lifetime’s military engagements. I sent my list to the CO and logged the Virtual.
Being easily distracted, I grabbed a couple of Adventure Labs while I was there, and then decided to take a longer route back to the car to get the rest of the ones in the series. And since I had them all, it only made sense to grab the bonus cache located half a mile away. Honestly, I was just avoiding the inevitable. Once I was done, I needed to head south to Waxahachie and that meant passing through that most hated of places, Dallas. That’s not an indictment of the city itself (in this case). It’s the only city I’ve ever driven through where I am always white knuckling it. I can drive through that place at two in the morning (and have) and still be scared to death that I’m going to meet my end in a wreck with some crazed lane weaver. And yet, as I looked upon Babylon’s towers, for the first time it wasn’t that bad. In fact, the traffic didn’t even rise to the level of Austin rush hour. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was pleasant, but it certainly wasn’t white knuckling in any sense. I can’t say if it was because it was Saturday and people were at home doing whatever they do on the weekend or because of the protective hex that Razorbackgirl was kind enough to provide me, knowing that Dallas is my bane. All I know is that I rolled from city to suburb to rolling fields in a relatively stress-free manner.
Once I had arrived in Waxahachie and completed my business there, I went ahead and stopped for one more cache because why not? It was pretty simple on a waterspout behind a tattoo parlor. The hard part was figuring out which waterspout since there were half a dozen on multiple buildings within easy reach. And with that, I headed back to IH-35 and continued south to arrive back at home around sunset.
And here is where you accuse me of burying the lede. Between Justin and Krugerville, I made another stop. I turned onto streets between suburb walls, navigating the the enclaves until I was bidden to enter one of them. I turned through the open gates, suspicious of houses that were worth more than I would ever have and yet solidly in the realm of middle class; upper middle, perhaps, but middle nonetheless. I turned again before entering a private estate and was led to a dead-end street at the back of a, for lack of a better term, park. I parked, and walked into a mowed section terminating at a treeline and then followed a well worn path into the trees. Before long, I encountered a mountain bike path and followed it a little farther to GZ of a cache. Two caches, actually. One of them was an EarthCache so I went ahead and did it. I learned a little about sandstone development and then submitted my answers to it’s CO. Then I opened up the other cache. My eyes went wide for a moment. According to the description, the cache wasn’t there. But a poem was. And if you follow the poem, it would lead you to it. Are you kidding me? This wasn’t a Letterbox! I know I’ve said it before, but I really need to look at the descriptions of caches before I go for them. But I went ahead and took a moment to look at the logs. Luck beyond luck, it had been found the day before and one of the finders, feeling similar feelings to the ones I had no doubt, put the actual coordinates in his log! No need for me to interpret an epic poem*! All I had to do was tromp through some high grass and through some forested hillside until I came to the edge of a moist creekbed (it had been raining up there Friday, too) and, after a search, found my quarry at a rock outcropping.
Ladies and gentlemen (or however you identify. I don’t mean to be gender exclusive), I give you No Walk In The Park. It’s not only a double-digit GC number, though. It is brother (or sister) to the oldest caches in Indiana, New Jersey, and Minnesota, all having been placed in November 2000. With this cache along with the cache I found on Friday (I told you that would matter!), I have now unequivocally completed the Jasmer Challenge.
Selah.
*If I had actually read the poem, it would have revealed that it was no longer correct so the real directions were in the hint. Truly, a comprehensive literary failure on my part.
Geocaching While Black 