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Splashin' in the Devil's Bathtub LbNA #724 (ARCHIVED)

Owner:D n' A
Plant date:May 26, 2002
Location:
City:???
County:Mystery
State:New Jersey
Boxes:1
Found by: ???
Last found:Jun 23, 2005
Status:FFFaa
Last edited:May 26, 2002
Box is MIA. Will be replaced later.

Somewhere in South Jersey lies a circular body of cold, blue water. The water remains unnaturally cold, even on the hottest of summer days. Some say that it was created by a meteorite crashing into the ground. Others speak more ominously of the Devil's bathtub. A bottomless blue hole where the Jersey Devil himself waits to drag unwary bathers down into the abyss. Which is correct? We don't know, but just to be safe side we did not go in despite the heat.

Old timers will tell you that the watery blue hole is nearly impossible to find. That the bridge has washed away. That you need to have a boat to reach the spot. But you know how us young whippersnappers are today. Always looking for the easy way to do things. All I can tell you is that we left the kayak at home. We parked the car in the Shotgun Range parking lot. We made a right onto the dirt road and followed the blue circle signs. We made sure that we never strayed into the areas marked "Warning: Fire Range Impact Area". Dead skeet littered the road near the range. The road veers away from the range and there is evidence of a massive uglification project underway. While we haven't seen the plans for the project, it apparently involves spreading orange dirt all over the road. The creepy old building that used to be on the left hand side of the road must not have met building code standards, because that has been removed leaving only a square outline. Eventually the road gives way to a much more esthetically pleasing, although harder to walk on, sugar sand. Here we whipped out the bug spray. Better to be safe than eaten alive.

At the jughandle on the right hand side, we left the main road for a pine needle strewn path marked by another blue circle sign. A short time later we came to clearing of sorts. On the left we could see the road that we had left so recently. On the right, a path was marked with blue blazes. Need we say we took the path. Eventually we came to the body of water in question. The blue hole of water off to the right if the path seemed to fill each of us with a sense of unease. Then we realized that there was no birdsong here, only eery quiet. The smooth surface of the water became disturbed and a dark shape was slowly rising to the top.

Who knows why we didn't run down the path in the direction from which we came? For whatever reason, we ran down the path at 80 degrees. The opposite direction! Before long we realized that we couldn't go much further. We would be at the river's edge soon and we could see the washed out bridge. We ran down a narrow path at 170 degrees. We were running as quickly as we could, but if we had been walking we probably would have gone about 20 paces. We turned into a little alcove at 260 degrees. About 11 paces at 210 degrees into the alcove, we turned to 260 degrees again and ran around two trees for another 11 paces. We hid behind a tree that splits into three trunks about four feet above the ground. We were shaking so hard. We eventually gathered our courage up enough to run back the way we had came. It was only when we reached the car that we realized that we had lost something back at the foot of the tree. We don't have the nerve to go back for it. Do you have the nerve?

D n' A
Furrll@hotmail.com