Henry County

Currently, have reached a slow down in my caching.  Reviewing my stats from previous April months; I don't rack up number despite the warmer weather.  Reflecting, April is a time of yard work and other non-caching distractions.  This year, I have a daughter graduating from high school.  Rain and thunderstorms on weekends have also dampered my caching exploits.

With no desire to make a long trip, I have focused my energies on caching Henry County since it's my neighboring county and has the numbers to reach my 4,000th find.  Highway 79 between Paris and Dover is quickly becoming a power trail like those I have expereinced in Selmer and Colunbia, TN.  It appears the game is becoming a stopping at guard-rails.  This past Saturday, I couldn't do anything at home, so I cleared the highway between Paris and Paris Landing.  I also wanted to clear those caches before the summer tourist season is in full swing and the highway become very busy.

On other days, I have been grabbing a cache or two on each trip.  There were a few that I liked.

Have you seen my lunch?,  it's simple grab at a diner, I was impressed the cache owner placed a regular sized cache. 

IS THIS A JOKE????, the challenge was finding the correct way to get to the cache.  I parked at a nearby church and walked across the field.  Turns out this is some type of rest stop and took me a while to locate the cache, since experience told me to check the wagon and I should have relied more on my GPS.

Helping Hand, this cache is a regular size and was closest non-found cache to my home.  I knew from the map it was located near a bridge, therefure I was concerned about water due to recent heavy rain.  I also was cocerned about parking since previous cache seeker made comments about lack of parking.  I arrived near the posted coordinates and turned up a nearby road to park.  I was just 75 feet from posted coordinates.  Took a little time to think about the situation and grabbed my hiking pole.  About that time, two people in a beat up 2-door car drove up and they decided to make the turn up the road where I was parked.  They kept going, I went onto the cache.  Found the cache after a short search, getting to it took some effort.  As I was signing the log, I heard that same car come back by.  I didn't look at them, but kept my ear to them.  They continued north, opposite where they came from when I arrived.  I had little doubt they were scoping me out for a robbery.  I figured, they would head north just a bit to turn around and on the 3rd trip make the strike.  With my mission complete, I headed to my unlocked truck and open window.  (I sometimes don't lock my vehicle when I am all alone and will be in full view and less than 100 feet of it during the cache hunt)  I have a handgun carry permit and had a 9mm Glock 17 loaded with a 17-round magazine.  Following one of the rules of handgun carry is to avoid the confrontation in the first place, I immediatly drove away in the opposite direction away from the people that were scoping me out.