Cache 1619...Blood Mountain
April 24 by Slayerette (1619) found
Blood Mountain
There should be a Found it FINALLY! button to log caches like this. This cache has been on my To-Do list for 10 years and to day was the day I got to cross it off with my pretty hot-pink Highlighter. I had been planning on replacing a missing cache for a friend at Desoto Falls for a while and Johnnie was determined that if when we did that, we would come do this cache too. He didn't tell me that we would also be climbing all the way to the Summit! I think he knew better. With our schedules being as Geo-Crammed as they are... this was the first and only available day till mid June. So we packed up the cars, met at our Mountain Meeting spot, combined into one car and headed up to the mountains to be on the trail by 10:00am. We knocked out the first leg of our trip relatively quickly. Our legs were warmed up and we were itchin' to attack that Blood Mountain with extreme gusto... Well, We had to make one little stop first for a Pop-Tart & a Diet Coke at Mountain Crossings. I'm thinking that may be a new Tradition. After we polished them off we headed to the parking area where we literally got the last parking space.
We geared up, locked up and headed for the trail. We got about halfway through the parking lot and we both stopped - looked at each other - and yelped "Stiiiiiicks!" I headed back to the car got our Hiking sticks while johnnie took inventory again to make sure we had everything. (Yeah, that worked the last time we left the car 2 minutes ago.) BTW - He got about halfway to the cache when he realized... he forgot his phone in the car. We huffed and Puffed while climbing all the way to this cache. Remember. We are out of shape, overweight(me), lung challenged(both), pain riddled(me) non-youngsters(both) who keep trying to get our caching legs again. So I didn't complain too much... until I heard conflicting distance to the cache reports. You can only say "we're about halfway there" & "it's just around the bend" so many times before I holler "BULL HOCKEY!" But we met lots of people on their way up as we let them by... and queried them about the distance ("How much further?") as we let them by on their way back down. the conflicting reports made me a little more cranky then usual, but I soon embraced the humor in it all. We talked and chatted all the way up which was certainly a treat, because we don't do enough of that in our everyday 8:00am calls. It surprises me that we never run out of things to talk about.
We arrived at the Crossroads and waited for everyone (it surely was crowded up there) to hop on down the bunny trail before we headed into the brush to search for the cache. We found it in short order and spent some time going through the log book to search for names of geo-buddies. I wish I had known that this can was so sparse, I would have brought some things up to leave other than my signature item. I had pared down my pack to only carry the very basic essentials. I covered it back up and followed Johnnie back out (and cussing him out all the way back to the crossroads) through the thorniest of briars. I thought... Woo Hoo we are done and ahead of schedule! And that's when he told me we were going all the way up to the summit. After a bit of hemmin' & Hawing... we headed up towards the summit. We took time to rest before really making the big incline to have a snack of Oranges. And off we went. And went. And yes... went. Slow and steady wins the race, since we weren't racing to the top... we certainly both won once we crested the summit. We spent a lot of time at the top - took pictures which I'll load up later and took in the beautiful vistas. The only thing that was missing... Was Lucy - Dogapotamus. She loves to sit with us and look at the vistas after a long hike. But she's 12 now and can't make these caching trips anymore. I know she would have loved to have crossed off this mountain with her pretty pink highlighter too.
Thank you so much for a memorable day.
Favorite Cache Point Awarded
Out of 18 caches... I have completed 4 and archived 1 (Tallulah gorge) ... 13 to go!