"If you cannot bear the silence and the darkness, do not go there; if you dislike black night and yawning chasms, never make them your profession. If you fear the sound of water hurrying through crevices toward unknown and mysterious destinations, do not consider it. Seek out the sunshine. It is a simple prescription. Avoid the darkness.
"It is a simple prescription, but you will not follow it. You will turn immediately to the darkness. You will be drawn to it by cords of fear and longing. You will imagine that you are tired of the sunlight; the waters that unnerve you will tug in the ancient recesses of your mind; the midnight will seem restful -- you will end by going down."
-- Loren Eiseley, The Night Country
DIRECTIONS:
The coordinates above are for the 24-hour Eno River Boat Ramp, in the scenic flat water area just west of Falls Lake. This places you in the Butner-Falls of Neuse Game Lands, so be aware of hunting seasons and times.
Follow the shining path upstream (southwest). Your flashlight will guide you. (If you're using a paddle, a headlamp would be very helpful.) While the terrain is rated 5, due to the special equipment required - that is, a boat of some kind - you should be able to complete this cache while remaining in a sitting position; there's no need to go ashore.
Follow the orange trail tacks. The white ones are from a previous incarnation of the cache. The white ones won't mislead you, but they won't get you all the way to the new final location.
All of the tacks are singles (except for where an orange one is near an old white one) until you get to the final. The final location is marked with three tacks.
While there are vast quantities of poison ivy along the banks, the final location has remained PI free (so far).
REFLECTIONS:
Placing a night cache along a river presents a unique set of challenges. A visitor to this cache once described the trail tacks as "looking like a highway of reflectors," to which I can only reply that redundancy is necessary in response to natural attrition.
Due to both said attrition and the lack of suitable wood along stretches of the river, you will sometimes experience the opposite of the highway effect: that is, a paucity of reflectors. Along such stretches of the river, let patience be your watchword. The encrypted hint below provides a way to know if you've gone too far, but please use it only when perseverance fails you.
Historically, this cache was underwater, with a rope one used to pull it to the surface. This is no longer the case.