Quote[/b] ] October 6 by Voodoodancer (188 found)
What a trip. I wish I could find the words to truly describe this trip. Another cache I had to risk my life to get. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it back alive, then somehow things got worse.
I'll start at the beginning. I have a friend that has been asking me for a long time to go canoeing with him. So we made plans to go for this cache. It called for rain today so we waited until this morning to decide if we were still going through with our plans. It turned out to be sunny so we loaded the canoe and headed for the river. We put in at the bridge, and headed for the cache. We didn't see much wildlife, but we saw plenty of trees across the river. Most of the trees we found our way around, but some we had to take the canoe out of the river and walk around. Every tree we came to I said this must be the one that is described in the cache info.
Soon the river was more like a ditch. We decided to abandon the canoe and see if we had any luck on foot.
I could see on the gps that we had made a big loop and we were not far from the road again. Not far from the river we found a deer stand and a trail through the woods. We followed the trail because it seemed to be heading towards the cache. It brought us right to the cache area.
Before we got to the cache area I remembered that I had forgotten to bring my pen. I told my buddy and he asked what would we do if the cache didn't have a pen in it. I told him that nothing is going to stop me from signing that log even if I had to sign it in blood, and I didn't care if it was his or mine.
While looking around for it, I walked right up onto a yellow rat snake. He wasn't moving, So I started to take out my camera real slow to get a pic of him before grabbing him. I was to slow because he crawled under a fallen tree. We dug around to try and find him but he probably had a hole under the tree and was safe underground.
It was about this time I started regretting my decision of not using bugspray. As time went on the more I regretted it. A few hundred mosquitoes have never stopped me before and it wasn't going to stop me now.
With all the tree cover the gps was a little jumpy and I walked around in circles for a while. I read the hint and there was many places that cache could be. My shoes came untied so I sat on a log to retie them. As soon as I stood up I saw the cache. I was so relieved to see that the cache had a pen. I signed the log, and took a pic of my buddy and then myself with the camera inside the cache. I returned the cache and we headed back to the canoe. As soon as we started back I heard thunder but it was far away. I knew we had to hurry, but I thought we had time to make it back to the bridge before it started raining. About half way back, it started raining, and the lighting was getting closer and closer. We got to an area where the river went 3 ways. We went both ways but the gps showed that both was the wrong way. By now it was really pouring. Somehow we entered an area of the river that we couldn't pass with the canoe either way we went. So we pulled the canoe up on the bank and decided to get out of the water and think about which way was the best way to go. The lighting was very close to us now. We would see the flash and hear the boom about a second later. It was way too close for comfort. We had two options. Stay on the little piece of land that we were on or to put the metal canoe back in the water. Both choices were very risky but we decided to wait the storm out on land.
We were both completely soaked by this point. Lighting was hitting all around us and we weren't sure which way we should go. I was thinking that things couldn't get much worse, but I was wrong.
If you have ever been to a very wet area that has a lot of trees then you should have noticed wooden spikes sticking up out of the ground. These are roots that trees send up out of the ground so the roots can breathe.
Like I said I was soaked to the bone waiting to see if I was going to be struck by lighting. I leaned against a fallen tree. It snapped and as I was falling towards the ground backwards, I heard my buddy say "WATCH OUT FOR TH" but it was to late.
I don't know if what happened next is suitable for younger cachers, so take precautions if they are nearby.
As I fell backwards I landed on one of those root spikes I was telling you about. I was extremely lucky that the one that I landed on was not one of the sharper ones and I'm glad I was wearing jeans. I think if the spike was any sharper or if I was wearing pants that was made of any thinner material, I would have been "stuck" there.
Well, the rain stopped, and the lightning kept getting farther away so we put the canoe back in the river and around the first turn we spotted the bridge. This was one trip I was glad that it was over.
Over all it was a good trip. I was hoping to see some Alligator mississippiensis or maybe even the very rare Humanus fray-puella or Feline niger. But I spotted neither. Maybe next trip.