This was it. Our first day of AGT caching in Jefferson. The land of the ‘toughest’ AGT caches. The ‘hardest’ hikes. Blah, blah, blah.
We started the day in Punxsutawney, the home of the world’s most famous weather predictor. We have been to Punxsutawney before. We both remembered this quiet, small town that was fun to walk around. Either our memory is failing or traffic has gotten really bad. Our second AGT cache made us walk all over the town. There was so much traffic and street crossings that we both really disliked the cache by the time we were done. Our highlights of the walk were a quick stop at the weather museum and a chance sighting of the largest water snake either of us has ever seen. It was huge. Still we had the find, number two in Jefferson.
After that we settled down to some serious woods time. Jefferson was all it was sold as and more. We were hoping for six of the ‘easiest’ with time to grab a coin. It didn’t happen. By four we realized no way. We also guessed the coin redemption place would be closed Saturday (correct assumption) so we just settled in for some serious hiking and caching. We also started to grab some other caches as well.
We got to visit one of the scripture rock caches. The story related to these caches is that a gentlemen many years ago had a small problem with drinking and fighting. One evening in a bar he found out that the two didn’t mix well. After time his physical wounds healed, but he was never quite right again mentally. Among other things, he would go off each weekend into the woods of Jefferson with his Bible and his chisel and spend the weekend chiseling scripture verses into the huge rock faces in the area. Some of the rocks have begun to fade, but the writing is still visible and very clear with some. We only had time for this Scripture Rock Cache, but it was a nice hide and a good walk. I stitched together one of the longer strings of words I can find. They are posted in the panorama blog.
After scripture rocks, we headed for a local park and a nice woods cache. This park had one of the two best foot bridges on the trip. It was really shaky and a lot of fun. Yes, Ali was stuck with me swinging the bridge the whole way over and back. This park, like so many other places on this trip, was filled with rhododendrons in blossom. We had an outstanding time here.
We returned to the AGT and more time in the woods. Our last few caches took us to woods, water, and a fish hatchery. We had a great time feeding the trout before heading over for a quiet sunset along the Clarion River. At the end of the first day, Jefferson was turning out to be special.
No comments:
Post a Comment