A foot is a device for finding furniture in the dark.

After driving several hours, I finally decided to crash a a know spot just outside of Gainesville. I just need to pull in for a few hours of rest and parked next to Alachua Sink just off the High Springs exit. The teardrop makes such stops quite easy. I just pulled into a wooded area, pulled a few items from the camper, crawled in, and fell asleep.

After waking up I was pretty much on the road within 5 minutes. I did have one setback this day in that whenever I would get up to speed, I would feel the truck shake until I slowed to 60mph. I stopped a couple of times looking for damage but could not find anything. I kept going until finally one of the tires decided to spit off the tread while heading full speed down the interstate while scrapping the hell out of the truck's right rear quarter panel. It was a tad scary as the truck, having a sudden loss of a quarter of its traction started to swerve (the trailer fishtailing didn't help), but I finally got it under control. I was quite thankful for the GPS in that I merely had to have it search for the nearest tire service centers and it generated turn by turn directions for me automatically. Fortunately the tire remained intact (minus the tread) so I was able to limp the 4.5 miles to the service center. After $60 and an addition hour and a half of waiting, I was able to get on my way.

Since it had been a while since I had done it, I thought I would meander my way up and do some geocaching while heading to North Carolina. After a long time, the organization found a way to allow one to find caches along a route whereas previously one could only find points in an area radiating from a particular point. This made it quite easy to find sites that are just a mile or so off of a planned route. I decided to hit a bunch of sites that had travel bugs since for some reason that aspect appeals to me. I've mentioned it to others before, but one of the main things I enjoy about the hobby is that it brings one to places they never would have otherwise been made aware. I found a couple of really neat caches that were down long dirt roads and along a riverbank that had really lovely views. One cache was at a river overlook that was home to an extremely old cemetery that houses some of the original families to inhabit the Florida area. Not only were there some neat items in it, but the area itself was really rustic and photographic. I really enjoyed checking out some of the old headstones and markers. Another cache was on the Suwanee River and was found at the end of a long road. It was nice in that the cache owner had left a travel bug that could be adopted by the finder, so once I figure out the mission and release it into the wild, I'll have my very own trackable item.

Though it was dark when I arrive, I retraced some of the steps take last year at Tallulah Gorge in north Georgia. This was where I had a great trip last year and also had spent my birthday traveling to visit. I finally made it into Cherokee late in the evening and was able to find a parking lot of an abandoned hotel in which to park, make my dinner, and get some rest so I could get an early start in the morning.