I'd rather be over the hill than under it!

Sunday morning I, along with three other Tampa locals, headed to Mt. Dora (a bit NW of Orlando) for a weekend hash campout. The annual Hill Country Hash is held in PatchWorkQuilt's backyard and usually sees attendees from most of the local groups. I took the teardrop camper and after a late start, got there a little after noon. We set the tents and such and hung around for a little while to wait for the trail to start. We were trucked over to the hash start where we mingled for a while before getting the information from the hare and all (probably about 50+ people there) packed into various trucks and cars to be hauled to an Irish pub that would serve as the start. It took us quite a while to get there and many of the runners were getting nervous as to how far we were traveling, assuming the end was back at the camping area at the house. After a few drinks at the bar, the runners headed over to the park across the street to the docks to be picked up by some boats and ferried over to one end of the massive water body (Lake Dora I think). As soon as we got to land we took off after the hare.

The tail is one of the best that I've done. there was a great mix of terrain from well kept nature trails to fields of short (and prickly) brush and numerous fire lanes. There were checks all over the place, so the front runners were kept busy trying to solve all the intersections. I'm pretty sure that we did 4-5 miles (of true trail) at least before the trail ended just at the waters edge. Apparently the front runner just missed the hare by about 30 seconds as an escape was made on a boat driven by Shellshock. We had to wait for some of the other boats to come pack us in, but fortunately a stash of beer was left for the pack! The boats just took us over to another shore spot where we had to bail a few feet from shore and take off again. There were still more checks and such to do, but somehow I lucked out at an intersection and decided to head in a direction that was different than what the 1-2 people in front of me guessed. I found a true trail marker and kept on going until the end that was the home of a hasher that had passed away last year. I was the Front Runner and came to a backyard full of walkers that were milling around and chatting and I got to even goof around on one of the backyard swings. Apparently a lot more people showed up after the runners had left and I got to see a bunch of folks that I hadn't spoken to in months. It was finally getting late, so we loaded up in the boats one last time for a decently long ride to yet another dock and more trail. Fortunately this trail was pretty well marked and didn't have any checks since it was already after sunset and no one had a light (since we had been running since about 4). The trail ended up at yet another house where a meal of two slow-roasted pigs, chicken, and oysters were waiting. We hung around for quite a while chowing down and ended off with a pretty good circle and even a naming for the evening. One major highlight was Moth's off-road adventure. He was taking small groups of folks in his Isuzu vehicle on some insane jungle tours. We were driving at break-neck speeds through the woods with no set path and were literally plowing down many good sized trees, fences, and brush. This was an open backed vehicle and there were leaves, sticks, and vines flying everywhere. We only got stuck once and had to rock the vehicle off a log, but otherwise it was a blast. I was definitely glad to get back from the scary, yet exhilarating ride.

The rest of the night was spent just getting cleaned up and lounging around drinking and such. Though a decent group left for a while to go to a local bar, but the day's adventures were really wearing on me, so I crawled into bed relatively early. In the morning we heading to a local breakfast place (Orange Blossom Cafe?) for a decent meal. The rest of the day consisted of pretty much my favorite part of such campouts, the sitting around and telling of stories. ThanksForTheMammaries had just gotten back from a three week trip to Asia (for the World Interhash event in Thailand) and had a lot of awesome stories of the various adventure. I definitely need to find a way to start doing more world traveling like this and hope to some day experience some of these kinds of things. Except for breakfast and gas, the whole weekend cost only $10 and was a great time! As usual, I took a couple of photos and posted them here:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=vnlbugz.29mjvhqb&x=0&y=ew7usy