Looking back on November 1, 2014
By the second-to-last stage of Scary Roads, my imagination was working considerably harder than my GPS.
We had set out for a night cache the day after Halloween. There were seven of us, a cemetery, and enough ghost stories to give every sound a little extra significance. That sounded like a good evening of geocaching.
It was. There was also a point when we apparently needed reminding of that.
A cache worth waiting for sunset
On November 1, 2014, I was out caching with .MikeyB, bapierson, CanisMinor, djpd1023, LEGOexplorer, and tankgirrl. The main attraction was Scary Roads!!! Night Cache (GC278JY), a multi-cache by Naturefreeks4 in the Belvidere area of northern Illinois.
It had been on my to-do list for some time. When it was briefly archived, I thought I might have missed my chance. Once it was reactivated, I wanted to get out there while we could. djpd1023 had been watching it, too; his log describes much the same relief at getting another opportunity.
We made a day of it. CanisMinor’s account fills in the daytime sequence: we met up with djpd1023 after the earlier caching and had lunch in Genoa. But the cache we had come for required darkness. For once, sunset was something we were waiting for rather than trying to beat.
When it was time, all seven of us piled into CanisMinor’s cachemobile and headed toward the setting sun. Seven geocachers in one vehicle. Whatever Scary Roads had planned for us, it was going to have an audience.
The cemetery was only the beginning
Scary Roads was a driving multi-cache. We drove between stages, stopping to search for containers and work out where the next part of the adventure would take us. The listing called for a flashlight, spare batteries, a camera with a flash, and something to write with. This was going to involve more than pointing the GPS at one hidden box.
At the beginning, a reflective firetack helped direct the search. Inside the stage containers were instructions and stories that gave the route its atmosphere. The owner had put thought into both the hides and the storytelling.
The first stop was near a cemetery. We walked its perimeter and took photographs, staying outside as the instructions required. In my original log, I remembered the dark cemetery with a half moon overhead and Halloween only just behind us. The scene hardly needed help from my imagination. My imagination supplied it anyway.
The ghost stories were part of the cache experience. I was there to find containers, not to establish whether the local legends were true. Still, reading something unsettling in daylight and reading it beside a dark cemetery are rather different activities.
There was plenty of fun mixed in with the unease. tankgirrl remembered one particularly clever part having us laughing, and all of us seemed to appreciate how the stages had been put together. Then we reached the second-to-last one.
The stage that stayed with us
I remember coming up to that stage and hearing a gunshot. There were lit torches, and I could hear people in the distance.
I can’t tell you who those people were or what they were doing. Those are the things I remember seeing and hearing. After a night of spooky stories, they gave my imagination quite a bit to work with.
My original log was more restrained: I admitted that the second-to-last stage had my imagination running a little wild. Reading the others’ accounts makes it clear I wasn’t the only one.
tankgirrl described the whole group being on edge, even running to hide. CanisMinor remembered djpd1023 questioning whether we ought to continue, then teased that he had held his hand. His version of events was evidently going to preserve everyone’s dignity.
djpd1023 supplied the other memorable detail: .MikeyB’s laugh. In his telling, it was enough to scare off the boogeyman so we could carry on.
A frightening stage, followed by your friends making sure it would never be forgotten. There are certain disadvantages to having witnesses.
One favorite point felt inadequate
We continued and found the final without a problem. The logs record us signing individually or as Team Awesome Sauce, shortened to TAS when space called for it.
My own verdict was that this was one of the best caches I had done in a while. I appreciated the work that had gone into the stories and the hides, and I wished I could give it more than one favorite point.
That still seems a fair assessment. Scary Roads gave us a reason to bring the group together, wait for dark, and follow a story from one stop to the next. The second-to-last stage gave us something else to talk about afterward.
I went looking for a memorable night cache. I got one—and six companions whose logs make it rather difficult to pretend I was completely unruffled.
Field Notes
- Adventure
- November 1, 2014
- Location
- Belvidere area, Boone County, Illinois
- Featured cache
- Scary Roads!!! Night Cache (GC278JY) by Naturefreeks4
- Cache type
- Night-only driving multi-cache
- Companions
- .MikeyB, bapierson, CanisMinor, djpd1023, LEGOexplorer, and tankgirrl
- Group name
- Team Awesome Sauce / TAS
- Occasion
- A Halloween retrospective, looking back on the day after Halloween 2014
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