2012-04-08 30 -81

Expedition

Geohashers

Geoff
Erica

The Plan

After the first failed hash, I'm determined to actually make it to a point. This one is in some woods just off I-95, across the border and into Georgia. The plan is to park at a nearby high school, then walk the mile and a bit to the hash. This time, knowing the distances and rough directions should make it easier to make the entire trip.

Should remember my deck of cards this time; left them at work for my last hash.

The Adventure

Make no mistake about it. We reached the hash, but this was a failure.

The initial idea was to leave around 10:00 AM. Erica wasn't even awake until closer to 11:00 due to a lack of sleep. We left at noon on the dot and left for the hash point, taking I-95 north with no problems. We reached Camden County High School at 12:50, stopping to take a few pictures since it looks more like a college than a high school. A few unintended side jaunts and trying to figure out what the maps were, we took to a nature trail clearly used to appreciate the sublime beauty of teenagers getting drunk. At one point, I thought I saw more empty cans of Bud Light than mosquitos.

The hash point required us to go off the path and into the woods. Alright, it's not too thick, we can manage this! And, although it didn't feel like it at the time, this varying degree of thickness, where the most to worry about were spider webs, was the easy part. Which is saying something when, during the easy part, both the GPS and my smartphone started losing the signal. As such, there's no picture of the GPS directly at the hash point, but the closest I could manage was my phone quite a bit away when it picked back up. We left the Three of Hearts at the point, although given that the pin wouldn't stick in the tree, I imagine it has fallen already.

And then the trip took a turn for the worse. Because, and I can imagine most geohashers will cringe at this statement, we thought we went back the way we came.

We did not.

The return trip quickly ran into some thick overgrown palm fronds, and like utter fools, we kept thinking that the nature trail should be nearby! We probably got our hopes up decidedly far too often that we were about to a clearing. About the only silver lining was that the mosquitoes that were swarming us earlier didn't live in this neck of the woods. We tried what we could. Humor only got us so far. Strategically moving around the palm fronds was impossible 95% of the time, and juggernauting through the plants was more exhausting than helpful. I was actually starting to get really worried about an hour into it, as we were running out of water with no end in sight. Thankfully, before it got too terrible, we got out of the large overgrowth... and before long we could see the highway! Sweet salvation! All that remained was a metal wire fence; I could crawl, but Erica, who now had several cuts on her legs, was a bit apprehensive.

So there we were. Walking down I-95, half a mile to the exit so we could then walk another mile and a half to the school where we parked, after an hour of being hopelessly lost, running low on supplies, and generally feeling quite fatigued about the matter. I turned to her and asked, "So are we still dating?"

We stopped inside a Shell gas station on the way back, praising the fact that it sold food and thus had something to sit on. So what meal of champions did we eat to get our strength back up? Slushies. Hey, I never said all these problems weren't avoidable. Some first aid supplies and a water refill later and we were back on the road! Which was when First Mate Knee of the Right Rear Navy decided to mutiny. Thankfully, he was not joined by other wiser, clearheaded body parts. Aside from my newfound limp, it was simply an uneventful matter of time before I returned to my car. And I have to say, a Honda Civic has never looked so beautiful.