So there I am, about a thousand miles from home in Duluth, GA, ready to leave town and return home from the family wedding, but still in possession of three travel bugs that REALLY need to be left out of state (two of them want to go to Atlanta, only 20 miles away). So out comes GSAK and I filter for caches with TBs and a relatively easy difficulty (the family is going to wait in the car, and it’s starting to rain). There’s one – difficulty 1.5, terrain 1.5, ammo box, lots of recent find logs, sounds pretty easy. And only a half mile away. Cool. Off we go to the nearest parking lot. Little do I know what awaits…
Out of the car, umbrella in one hand, GPSr in the other… okay, this approach is starting to look not so cool – 523 feet away, but a small meadow and big drainage pond and thin forest between me and the cache; the park entrance is a couple miles away, and a half mile hike from that parking lot to the cache, versus a few hundred feet of bushwacking. And it’s rainy. Well, let’s go for it. Sooner I get started the better. Kids, relax, watch a video, stay put. Chrysalis, this shouldn’t take long… I’ll be back soon.
Looks like there’s a reasonable approach around the pond, down the meadow, along a culvert and into the thin woods, lots of skinny pines and some briars. Over a couple barbed wire fences, and whoa – a stream. About six feet wide, vertical sides about four feet deep, thin rush of water at the bottom. After a few detours left and right, it’s obvious my first approach is the narrowest… pick up a nearby log and drop it in for a dry foothold, and some seconds of scrambling later, I’m up on the other side without any mud to show for it. I’m not exactly dry – the rain has gotten worse, and the umbrella’s been getting in the way, so I’ve had it folded half the trip. But at least I avoided the muddy banks and stepping directly in the stream.
Just across the other side, a last push thru some underbrush (we’ll be getting back to that detail later) and into a clearing… only a hundred feet to go down a paved trail (finally!) Things are looking good. Hey… something’s wrong here…
ARGH! No cell phone!!!!
Panic. Panic. Panic. Deep breath… Hmmmm…. did I forget it in the car when I got out? No, I distinctly remember thinking I could be reached if she needed me… oh crud. Somewhere along 450 feet of wet ground, with waist-high grasses, thorns, and a big wide stream I scrambled over… Well, I’m only a few feet away, let’s log this thing first, then figure out what to do about the phone.
Here’s a small bridge over previously noted stream (hmmm), and my GPSr is showing 40 feet and closing… usually the rebound is about 40 feet, and there’s some evidence of foot traffic down alongside the bridge (to coin a new term, geoerosion), so let’s just take a quick look under the bridge – yep, there it is. (Gotta mention to the cache owner that ammo cans under bridges can get you in trouble these days…)
After fighting the dripping on my head thru the footboards, signing a slightly damp log, and discovering zero new TBs (drat!), the container’s closed and repositioned, and off I go back toward the car, and hopefully the phone.
At least I have two things going for me: I have a GPSr with backtrack to make sure I recover the same ground (figures I wasn’t paying close attention to my approach path!), and the phone was on… if only I could call Chrysalis and ask her to call my cell phone so I could hear the ring – oh, the irony! … but at least I *COULD* backtrack to the car, get her phone, and the go back AGAIN while calling my phone, all in the rain. On a good day, maybe if I waited someone else with a phone would happen by, but not in THIS weather. Of course if I wait long enough my wife will get frustrated and call to see what’s holding me up, but then she’ll just worry when I don’t answer multiple calls… This ain’t looking real pretty…
Time to whip out the one “big stick” left in my arsenal. Oh, dear Jesus, I don’t want to spend all day here looking for this phone, and I REALLY pray it didn’t fall in that stream. Please let me find this thing quickly.
Off I go, back to the car… eyes on the ground this time. Did I go that way thru the brush, or cut across the stream in the open here to the right? GPSr shows left a ways, but I don’t see the log in that stream. Anywhere. In fact, that three inch deep stream is now a good 18″ of roaring water. Guess the storm runoff hits quick here. And due to that GPSr whiplash, can I really trust the backtrack going EITHER way, precisely enough to find the phone? Oh, now what… gotta clear the stream SOMEHOW. Well, let’s trust the GPSr, head back to the left. Push thru those briars toward the stream – wait, this finally seems familiar… BINGO! Bless you, Jesus, there the phone is, on open ground, not even in deep grass! Must have had the waist clip pop open after catching on those branches.
Main problem solved! It’s wet but alive. And bless God it didn’t fall in that stream… woulda been long gone.
Well, back to the stream problem. It’s way too deep now to use that log. Six feet wide… no run-up area… at least there’s a bit of open space on the far side… gotta take a standing vault, with an umbrella in one hand, GPSr in the other, rucksack on the waist… into mud. Oh well, shoes are already soaked by the wet grass… but whammo, made it across, even cleared the mud. Only broke one spoke on the umbrella doing that four-point landing… shoulda closed the umbrella first… glad it missed my eye.
Five minutes of slogging back thru the wet forest and along a mostly empty culvert (at least all that runoff isn’t coming thru here) and thru the waist-deep meadow, I’m back at the car – only twenty total minutes elapsed – soaking wet, slightly damaged umbrella, but cell phone back in my posession, travel bugs deposited, and ready to roll. Okay, it took a good six hours for the shoes to dry out, and the jeans were still wet the next day, but at least with the luggage in the car I had dry clothes to don.
Certainly not the experience I would have chosen, but a real thanks is due to God for a gracious return of the phone. Coulda been a lot worse. Morals of the story? Cell phone clips don’t. Shortcuts aren’t. Close your umbrella before jumping. And God is good.
