Day 79:
Today I met Diego, hands-down the coolest dog of my trip.
When I left home, I watched the interstate numbers count down from 95 all the way to 5. Then I watched the horizontal interstate drop from 90 all the way down to 10. As I head home, I see those numbers gradually climbing higher. I’m already back at 75 and 85. Booooo
I woke up at a truckstop where I got my van washed last night some north of Hotlanta, off I-75 south. For some 
reason last night was the first night in several months I just wasn’t able to sleep. I tossed and turned and then finally just started my day in the middle of the night. I zigzaged around a couple of spots of HotLanta before the world was alive. This allowed me to find one of the funnest, choose your own adventure style, multicaches I have ever done. Also happens to be one of the oldest around, dates back to 2001. It’s just hidden in plain sight where I’m sure thousands of people see it, yet it’s been there for over 20 years.
I visited a place that had to do with Hank Aaron. That has something to do with baseball, I know that. I know the place I visited looks really cool on satellite imagery, looks like a baseball field in a parking lot. Check it on satellite view: HERE
After baseball on to golf, something I know a little bit about. I wandered around a graveyard that had the corpses of Kenny Rogers and Bobby Jones. I was lucky enough to be at the Masters weekend 2009.
After a couple hours it was time for me to get the hell out of the city, just as the sun was coming up and other people were showing up. My next destination had the word mountain in it, so I knew I was gonna like that a whole lot better than all this asphalt and high-rises.
Before heading to Stone Mountain, I stopped for a nice sit-down breakfast at first watch, one of our favorite places. It was delicious, hopefully gave me the energy I need to summit stone mountain. My objectives at Stone Mountain today are the really old geocaches, walking up to the top, and a third thing to be named later. I think Stone Mountain Georgia is where Kenneth the Page is from?
I spent most of the daylight hours at Stone Mountain. It’s quite a unusual site, that giant stone just sticks out like that for no particular reason. I walked up to the top of it along with a bunch of other people. The weather was perfect and the views were amazing. There’s always
something really unique about seeing a city skyline in the distance and a forest in the foreground. I passed the oldest lady I have ever seen climbing up there. She was using a cane taboot. It was so hard for me not to give her a high five. I passed her going at an area that gets really steep and has hand rails for 100 yards. I just assumed that would HAVE to be her turnaround point. On my way down, I passed her again, still heading up, and past the hand rail section! At that point I wanted to carry her the rest of the way. Somehow, I minded my own business.
I was glad to get the old beaver hide at all. Timewise, I guess I just got lucky. I’ve had two other geocaches from the year 2000 escape my path, because of weather. One in Southern California and the other in southern Florida. Today is the day I would have been here no matter what. I am just now seeing quite the dust up on the internet about this hide. I have been on the road for 3 months, and am using a pocket query/list that dates back about 6 months ago. As I said, I would have been here either way today, as this is where I am in my journey, and I am
thankful I hopefully won’t get roasted on the internet. A big reason I stay off the internet.
After that find I had a 2 hour drive east, to Modoc Georgia. Hopefully I’ll be able to get up and down that trail before I lose daylight. It’s getting later in the year and the sun going away so early is really thrown off my schedule of activities. Turns out Modoc is in South Carolina, not Georgia. I found that out on the drive there. It was about 10 minutes over the border.