Tadpoles, Numbers, and Hidden Boxes

17 April, 2011

A few weeks ago Woodhick803 and I were out in the cold and snow searching for Lake Stephens #2 Cache.  A DNF (did not find) bothers WH a whole lot more than it bothers me, so when the cache owner posted that this cache had indeed disappeared and was now replaced, WH was practically knocking down my door to get back out there and search.  And search we did.  WisconGranny (sister-in-law Joyce) made the trip with us this time (yay!) and we looked for quite some time, even going so far as stepping on the board that sheltered the cache.  Finally the eyes found a suspicious shade of green, close to nature's, but a shade off and - ta da! - there was the prize!

You know how easily I get distracted on these geocaching trips, but Woodhick was to blame for this one.  He was the one to spot these frog eggs.  If you look closely, you may even be able to see some tadpoles.  This made me think back to elementary school when someone always brought in frog eggs for the class to watch.

Another distraction of the day was this scene of a recent coal train derailment just at the entrance of Lake Stephens.  I couldn't help but imagine the noise the wreck made, let alone the fright of those driving on nearby route 3 as the coal cars came within inches of the roadway.

Last trip I posted that sometimes the cache isn't the only reward that you get when searching.  Remember the labyrinth at Caldwell's mini-park?  This excursion, however, the cache was indeed the reward.  Here you see WisconGranny and I posing in front of an electrical transformer (I guess) behind Fayetteville's Walmart.  I'm doing the "Vanna" thing and showing you the cache.  Yes - the numbers!  We searched everywhere, cursing our GPS units for returning us to the transformer.  The clue said the cache was at eye level; we saw nothing at eye level (or above or below) that even remotely resembled a cache, even to the point of wiggling screws, locks, and hinges to see if one of them was a fake one.  Finally, in desperation, I wiggled the numbers and - ta da! - there it was!  The numbers were the cache!  Magnetic numbers, made to look like a serial number.  How clever is that! 

Every good caching trip includes a hearty lunch or, in this case, dinner.  We relived the day and its highlights over ribs and onion rings at Dirty Ernie's Rib Pit in Fayetteville, WV.  Love me some good ribs!

To read about the day from Woodhick's perspective, check out his blog http://cachingin--geocachingme.blogspot.com/

Thanks for a great day, WisconGranny and Woodhick.


                                            Until next time - get outside and play!

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

9 April, 2011:  Met WisconGranny and Woodhick803 in Alderson for a day of geocaching, particularly a series called The Greenbrier River Geocache Trail.  It was a nice group of caches, taking us on a scenic drive along the Greenbrier River.

THE BAD
Carlito's in Fairlea was the scene for lunch.  During the chips and salsa portion I broke a tooth.  Well, I take that back.  I didn't really break it.  It just sort of crumbled away.  Obviously it was ready to go.

THE UGLY

These are the broken off pieces of tooth.  No pain, but I definitely feel like the stereotypical hillbilly woman with rotten teeth. Just need a good chaw of Redman now and the picture would be complete.








THE GOOD
By far, the best stop of the day was in Caldwell at Riverside Park.  It wasn't that the cache was so good, but the small park is home to a labyrinth dedicated to taking care of our Mother.

Nice stuff, right?  To read more about the day, check out Woodhick's blog http://cachingin--geocachingme.blogspot.com/2011/04/sometimes-cache-is-secondary.html?spref=fb

Get outside and play!

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!