Bacon (Extra Crispy)

My family decided to rent a house on Holden Beach, NC and invited me to join them as a sort of "meet in the middle" where they drive down from Ohio and I up from Georgia. Well, let me say I had to think hard about it; free vacation, on the beach, all I had to do was drive up and meet them on Saturday afternoon, and I could avoid the "you never come visit us" guilt trip mom lays out from time to time.

Of course, what really happened was that I drove up about halfway Friday after work then spent Saturday boxing around Florence, SC. It turned out that about half the boxes in the area were missing as the four main planters all seem to have vanished. A couple of highlights were noydb's 'Intimidator', which was my first ever First Finder, and Welcome to South Carolina! by Green Tortuga.

After finishing the drive, I spent the rest of the evening at the beach. And got burned. Badly. The next morning I was red, blistered, could not sleep, could not do much of anything other than sit and let the A/C blow on my skin. Yeah, I am pale and burn easily, you think I would know better... Well since I had no interest in being in the sun but was going stir crazy so still looked for a couple of boxes on the island and I checked the weather and saw "cloudy" for the forecast the next day. So I got up really early and of course went letterboxing. I spent the first part of the day around Oak Island, Southport and Bald Head Island before heading back as the late afternoon sun came out and I started feeling my burned skin. Bald Head Island seems like a very interesting place and I would love to return there one day, rent a bike and explore but I was just not in any condition to do that this trip...

So after this day of being outside and not trying to burn any further, I spent the next couple drowning in aloe and reading some books and magazines I had taken before heading home. I did stop for a couple more boxes on the return trip but all in all, found 17, attempted 10 and got my first boxes in both South and North Carolina.

Billboard Top 100

For a few months now, Mark and I have regularly been trading emails about life, boxing, carving and whatever else. On a whim I decided to go pick him up and head over to Stone Mountain today just because it sounded like we both could use some time away from life. This is actually the first time I have gone boxing with someone other than Artemis (not counting solo, which I did in Arizona).

This trip also had some other importance; the second box of the day was going to be my magical F100 so we specifically targeted what we had been told was an awesome WOM box, Tumbling Waters, that Mark had the clues for. I must admit, it definitely lived up to that bit of hype that it received. This has to be the most detailed carving I have seen so far and a great choice for a milestone. I also feel compelled to illustrate how great a guy Mark is. We spent a couple more hours going around the park and found a total of 9 boxes yet the only one he had not been to was Tumbling Waters. He just wanted the social aspect so spent a few hours with me walking and talking and NOT boxing, isn't that awesome?