A Cacheing We Will Go

I got an email the other day from a fellow geocacher who offered to lead a group to find a certain difficult cache.  I think the three of us who hadn't found the cache yet had been there at least twice.  I know that I have been there at least three times. There ended up being five of us who started out on Saturday morning on the quest. 

I took this picture of this plant growing in a crack while I was resting up after finding the cache.  I used the tele lens as I was about thirty feet away.



Here are four of us, I am on the right.



Same location, but I took this one.  Resting up after finding the cache.



View from where we wuz.   Cache is about thirty feet to the left of center, and down!




Sadly, I guess the pic he took of us down in the "hole" didn't take.  Anyway, after much patient coaxing and instruction two of us were able to overcome our fear of death to make our way down a ledge (of about ten feet) and find the cache.  Actually, getting down wasn't really the problem for me, it was getting back out!  But D. and his son helped us, showing us where to place our feet and such.  It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, strength-wise, but I would have panicked if I had been  on my own.  And been stuck there.  As it was, once I was out of the "hole" I scooted on my behind to relative safety.  One guy was unable to overcome his fear of heights, and decided to try it again another day.  I was almost there myself, I'll tell you!

We mostly split up after that, heading our separate ways to find caches.  I did one more with a couple of them, then I headed back to the truck.  It was very warm and sweat made me quite blind.  I ran across a group in camo fatigues, with big radios, calling out coordinates. I couldn't make out their service, but they had been driving civilian vehicles, on park roads, so they must have had an official gate key.  They had a sentry/spotter up on a little hill in the bushes that I barely noticed. 

Anyway, walking back was a death march, I'll tell you, but I made it.   Driving home I stopped to lend assistance to a fellow stalled on the Fletcher Parkway exit, partially blocking a lane.  He had no cell phone, I had no cell phone, and he had an autistic child in the van that he couldn't leave.  I got a couple of passersby to call the CHP (Thanks, Aaron!).  A couple more guys helped roll the van a little closer to the guard rail.  A motorcyclist stopped and loaned his cell to the driver to call his boss (The ONLY vehicle that stopped! Thanks!!).  I waited an hour but neither the CHP nor the boss showed.  I had to go home at the point as I was getting a little shaky.  My kids passed by there a little later and said a tow truck was helping him.

That is it for Saturday!