94%

25 March, 2011

During my careers as both student and teacher, 94% was pretty good, but on my last geocaching trip that 94% was laughing at me.  14/15 caches found for the day - the last one was the one we couldn't find!

It was a cold and dreary March morning.  Add in some snowflakes and low 30s temperature for good measure and you'll have an appropriate setting of the most recent outing for Woodhick803 and me.  We headed off to Little Beaver State Park to finish the caches there that we didn't have time to look for last trip.

Here I am, all bundled up (sans hood for the photo), even wearing my warmest long johns which had already been put away for the season.  This was quite an usual cache in that it wasn't hidden, but that was what made it tricky to find.  We get so used to looking on the ground, under leaves, or even in rock crevices, that we sometimes forget to look up.

You can see how the cache owner has wrapped rope around the tree to enable the finders to lower the cache.  Pretty clever.

I'm easily distracted on our geocaching trips.  I named this Canada goose Bert and it looks like he's banded.  Bert and friends were honking and hooting that morning at Little Beaver State Park.  I love to watch them come in for a water landing.

We headed on to New, WV, which is soooo new that it isn't even there, although the road sign is.  Again I got distracted - see the icicles?  Brrrrr!!!!










Woodhick803 (aka Dan, my big bother, er, brother) is like a little kid hunting for hidden treasure or maybe wanting to get to the Christmas presents first when it comes to geocaching.  It's an ongoing joke, but true, that he's out of the car and on the prowl before I even have the door open.  Here he is looking through the SWAG (stuff we all get) at the New Cache.

By this time we were both ready for lunch.  After a couple of quick finds,we had some pretty good taco salads at Paco's in beautiful downtown Ghent.

This trip, as our last, took us to Coal City.  This time, however, we traveled over the river and definitely through the woods and through such metropolitan areas (snicker) as Odd and Josephine.  Let me not forget, either, such places as Pigshin Hollow and Hoo-Hoo Hollow.  By the way, if you pronounced that word "hollow", you're not from West Virginia.  Any home grown person would know that it's "holler".  Don't ask me why.  I don't know.

 Yes, that's most definitely an arm and hand rising up from this gravesite.  Pretty spooky, huh?  We almost missed the cache near this cemetery; several cachers before us had commented that they couldn't find it, sending Woodhick803 and me into a lengthy discussion of whether or not we should go looking for it.  Woodhick found it (and it had nothing to do with this scene).  He says you have to look for it where it is, not where it isn't.  Well, duh!  He was quite tickled with himself for that find.

So that brings us to Lake Stephens, scene of the elusive 15th cache.  We looked up the hill; we looked down the hill; we looked where our GPS units led us; we looked where our GPS units didn't lead us.  But obviously we kept on looking where the cache wasn't, instead of where it was.  94%.  Argh...........

Get outside and play!

It Was a Drybees Kind of Day

17 March, 2011

I finally had the opportunity to geocache once again with friend Drybees, the lady who introduced me to geocaching. 

Drybees had a medical appointment in Charleston, so after that and a good lunch at Red Lobster (geocachers love eating as much as caching, doncha know?) we caught a few caches, all in the Southridge area.  I think we found four caches that day, along with one DNF.  (Boo!  Hiss!)  We both laughed, however, at one cacher's description of the container he used.  He called it a "bottle", but it actually was a 35mm film canister.  Not quite the same in my opinion.

Fun day with a great friend.

Get outside and play! 

How Many Geocachers Does it Take to Find a Mill?

Saturday, 12 March, 2011

It was a geocaching kind of day, but that wasn't what was going on.  On our last trip out Woodhick803 had discovered some ruins and, being the naturally inquisitive type of person that he is, had to delve further into this mystery. 

<enter Waypoint_Wayne>

YES!  It really was Waypoint_Wayne of the "Phone a Friend" cache, my all-time favorite!  WW, WH, and I met up at IHOP early (for me) one Saturday morning.  The "boys" poured over railroad charts and discussed whether or not those ruins could be from Spangler's Mill, an old woolen mill located in the Fitzpatrick area of Raleigh County.  Off we drove to that location and hiked along the railroad tracks for a mile or so, crossing several bridges where you could see Piney Creek racing along below us.  <Gulp!>  The guys did all the searching - I was just along for the sunshine, the hike, and to photograph this historic occasion.

 




A coal tipple spotted along the way.  Coal tipples were used to clean, sort, and load coal onto railroad cars.








Coltsfoot in bloom.  I love spring!

The beavers have been hard at work on this tree.  Didn't see any of the critters though.

See the holes?  I'll bet they were made by a hungry woodpecker and, by the size of the holes, probably a pileated woodpecker at that.  Those guys are huge and remind me of pterodactyls.








The answer to the titled question is still unknown.  However, I did find out that Waypoint_Wayne's wife is a former co-worker of mine.  There's a funny story there too about recognizing your own children, but I'll let it lay.....

Get outside and play!

1 March, 2011

I suppose geocachers in the area are once again happy to be out, searching for those elusive Tupperware boxes.  It's been a long, cold, snowy winter and Woodhick803 and I are certainly among those happy to be traipsing through the woods and along the concrete to find hidden treasures.

Do you see the cache hidden here?  It's right there, in plain sight.  No?  Check again.  It's the little silver panel.  Yep, that's it.  We encountered several of these fellas during the day, all placed by the same cacher.  The first one had Woodhick and me puzzled, but after that we were able to spot them from a moving car.  Hehe - I didn't even realize there were any telephone stands left.  Seems like everyone anymore has a cell phone stuck to their ears.

We found a cache nicely hidden at Little Beaver State Park.  I can't remember the last time I was out there.  Obviously years and years ago.  Woodhick and I reminisced about swimming at the lake during our childhoods.  There used to be a diving platform where all the teens congregated and sock hops were held in the pavilion several times during the summer.  I was much too young to enjoy either of those.  My mother used to sew a button to the shoulder strap of my swimsuit and that was as far as I could go out in the water.  Pretty smart, huh? 

Those were the summers of
"Ahab, the Arab" (accent on the "A", please) and "Purple People Eater".  Long time ago.  Anyway, these are two photos of our hike to "Woody Chair" and yes, that is indeed a water crossing.

The nicest find was SS Geo, at the Shady Spring Library.  No, not the cache, but these harbingers of SPRING!!!!  Remember how Snoopy did his Happy Dance when it was dinnertime?  That's how I felt when I discovered the crocuses.  IT'S GONNA BE SPRING!!!!






Always a fun day out geocaching with my brother.  I have spent more time with him during the last two or three years than ever before and have discovered that he's really okay.  LOL!  Love you, big brother.

Before I forget, we had a delicious lunch at the local Indian restaurant, Aangan.  Sure hope that place stays in business.

Get outside and play!

Not Quite a Dozen

19 February, 2011

Finally!  A day warm enough with Woodhick803 over his cold.  A full day of geocaching!  Yay!

I dragged myself out of a nice, soft, warm, cuddly bed at the ungodly hour of 7am, showered, took care of the kitties, etc, and headed out into the cold (36 degrees) to meet Woodhick in Lewisburg, WV, an hour's drive.  We hit the trail running, or hiking I should say, on Jerry's Run Trail, just over the state line into Virginia, to find the Allegheny Trail cache, one that was sorely in need of some TLC.  Woodhick gave it first aid, replacing not only the contents of the cache but the container itself.  He's now a foster parent. 

Woodhick claimed a FTF at Welcome to VA on I-64.  It appeared that this cache was a former Letterbox cache (similar to geocaching, but a bit different, as I understand it) that has just been listed as a GC.  Congratulations, Woodhick!

Probably the nicest part of geocaching is that it gets you out to see places that either you didn't know existed or had always meant to see, but never took the time.  This is the Humpback Bridge, where we took a DNF (did not find), but it was nice to see such an unusual bridge.  While there we met a young college student who was writing a paper on the bridge and she gave us a rundown of the bridge's history.  Nice!





Another highlight of the day was the Falling Spring Falls earthcache.  There is no actual cache box to find at an earthcache; rather, there's some natural occurrence to see and then answer questions about.  Thomas Jefferson surveyed these falls in 1781.  To learn more about the falls, visit http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=fc86f8bc-1cff-4ed7-8bff-08046918afdb

I found this little plant growing in tiny little crevice in a rock at the Mouth of the Island cache near Covington, VA.  Guess we should all take a lesson from this little fellow.

And finally, here I am, taking the bull by the horns.  (Okay, I know it's a buffalo, but play along, would you?)  Curious Ride was a virtual cache, sort of like an earthcache, but not dealing with nature.  Virtual caches are no longer admitted under the geocaching rules and are now listed as waypoints.  This one is still listed as a geocache just because it was in place before the rules changed.  By the way, it helps to read the cache's description - Woodhick and I spent 10 minutes looking for a real cache before we noticed it was listed as a virtual.

Of course, we had some good food along the way.  Lunch was at Cucci's in Covington, VA, where we had some delicious meatball sandwiches.  Yum!  And the day warmed up into the 50s with a beautiful clear blue sky.

Until next time, get outside and play!

It Was a Guardrail Kind of Day

4 February, 2011

Winter finally took a break and Woodhick803 and I were able to get out and find a few caches.  After he caught a couple of local caches, we traveled north on Rt. 16 (aka Robert C. Byrd Drive) to such mini-opoli (the opposite of megalopoli?) as Pemberton, Sullivan, and Coal City to track down a series of what turned out to be, with one exception, all guardrail caches.  Apparently they were all placed by the same geocacher who took his nieces and nephews to place the caches and then named them after that relative.

Here's a picture of six caches.  Yes, I know that's only one photo, but remember I told you that, with one exception, they were all guardrail caches.  I don't want to sound bigoted, but those guardrails all look alike to me.

The lone exception to guardrails was a cache placed at Fitzpatrick Park.  I had never been out there and, even though it's just a few miles from town, it felt as if we were not only in the wilderness but had also traveled back in time a generation or two (or three or four). <cue music from "Deliverance">

"Patriot Boot Camp" found us celebrating my 100th find.  Woodhick803 presented me with a certificate and letter of introduction (appropriate for framing, of course) and I think he was humming Pomp and Circumstance during the presentation ceremonies.

It was fun to get out, see the sun, and breathe some fresh air.  I doubt that winter's over yet, but it's getting closer each day.

Get outside and play!

He Found the Cache, But I Found the Cash

18 November, 2010.  Dreary, drizzly, chilly.  Just the right kind of weather for geocaching!  Yay!  Put on the long johns and a couple of extra layers and I'm ready to go.

Woodhick803 and I found 13 caches today.  Well, actually Woodhick found ALL OF THEM.  No fair - he was jumping out of the car before I even had the engine turned off.  Next time HE drives!  Not only did he find all the caches, I even paid for lunch!  (I prefer brie with that whine, please.)

The most significant part of the day, however, was that we were able to celebrate Woodhick's 100th find.  Here are photos of the momentous occasion.

Woodhick manipulates the lock to open this clever cache which looked just like an electrical box, but had the official geocaching sticker affixed to it.

 Woodhick signs the log.  If he realized this was his 100th find, he didn't let on, although he did make the comment that as of this morning he had made 91 finds.  Wonder if he was subconciously keeping track?

Even though Woodhick may not have been keeping track of his finds today, I was.  And, being the wonderful sister that I am, I had planned ahead and made this wonderful Certificate of Achievement (suitable for framing) to present to him at the appropriate time.

Congratulations, Woodhick!

Woodhick may have found all the caches today, but at the last site I found cash.  Cash!  Alright, it was only 11 cents, but still......

Oh yeah - happy birthday, Mom.  Aren't you delighted that your children are playing together finally?  

 Get outside and play!