"That's a Negative, Ghost Rider"

There are times when discretion is truly the order of the day. And today was that day!

Another day dodging rain and auditing small cemeteries in the counties surrounding Br'er's home warren. One of the planned visits was to what is labeled in Find A Grave as McAfee Road Cemetery located on, shockingly, McAfee Road! With a scant 5 listed memorials an audit should take mere minutes.

The operative word there being 'should'. 

A truism taught to all military leaders is put simply; No plan survives contact with the enemy. Boy-o does it apply to these graveyard excursions! And how!

These graves are located in a residential area. The only parking is on the street (unless one is willing to risk using some stranger's driveway). McAfee Road is a main thoroughfare for the area so parking on the curb there is absolutely out of the question. There are side streets before and after the cemetery location, but these are, how shall I put it, not somewhere I would choose to leave a vehicle unattended. So the plan morphs into Mrs. Br'er staying with the car and circling the block while Old Br'er himself dashes over to execute the quick audit. 

That *was* the plan. What I found changed all that. Hell, it resulted in aborting the mission!

Unless I was willing to spend an hour or five clearing ivy no audit was happening. The entire area had been completely covered with a thick layer of English Ivy since someone had last updated Find A Grave with photos of the graves. Just for reference, these are those pictures stolen taken borrowed from Find A Grave.

Even in these one can see the ivy creeping in to take over.

It is worth sharing, too, what I encountered when I reached the site. This is the view from the sidewalk looking in at the area the graves are.

What especially saddens me is that I believe there are a couple of unrecorded graves here. If you enlarge this photo and look just to the right of base of the ivy covered tree, you will spot some telltale grey. This looked at the moment like a couple of  False Tomb graves. None of the listed memorials in Find A Grave show a False Tomb marker. So if that is what these are then there are unlisted graves on the site.

I hate that it was simply too unsafe to spend any time here. Perhaps one day if I can recruit a few folks to join in (there being safety in numbers) we can revisit, execute the audit, and determine for certain if these are graves or not.