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Sunday, April 28, 2013

10 February 2013 On the Way to Wytheville

I needed to be in Salisbury, North Carolina for a week and made my way south to Wytheville, Virginia on Sunday. I stopped for a few caches in two southeastern Ohio counties on the way. My first stop was at Wolf Run State Park. It was good to find a 3+ terrain cache.

I was headed south on county roads when I spotted this old wood-side caboose sitting in a small park. Old wood-sided cabooses are getting rare. This one is still in nice shape inside, but the exterior is on poor shape. One side is covered in a tarp and will be the end of this old caboose soon.

The park had much more history than the old caboose. This was and is the location of the Thorla McKee well. The well became one of the first wells ever to produce oil. It was drilled as a salt well, but yielded oil as well as brine. In 1814 no one really had any use for oil so the oil was gathered off and sold as "Seneca Oil", a cure all. The original well is still in place with an old wooden casing. It appears as though the well is pumped by hand with a leveraged section of wood. There is an old tree trunk in place to serve as the pump handle. The well still has dark oil on the surface and bubbles gas at frequent intervals.

I worked my way through most of the Highland Ridge series with a final cache at the church yard cemetery of the Good Hope Church. As I finished caching it was in the mid 50's. I had to drive through West Virginia and part of Virginia, but expected my good fortune with the weather to hold out. It didn't. An hour later I was in West Virginia. The temperature had dropped 20 degrees as I drove through the mountains. Most of my journey in Virginia was a cautious drive through unwelcome snow.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

9 February 2013 Marion County GeoTrail Part 3

The weather was wonderful. It felt like spring. The ice was gone, and the water was open. Since we were in Ohio we made a short trip to Marion County to officially finish the geotrail. We enjoyed a nice walk along a bike path.

This old railroad bridge is celebrating its 100th birthday this year.

This large mural graces the side of a building in downtown Marion and overlooks a small park. We missed finding the cache, but the mural was worth a stop.

We celebrated finishing the geotrail with a stop at Tim Hortons before heading off for the geocoin. Tim's was a special treat. They were featuring Valentine's heart-shaped donuts with chocolate icing and cherry filling. They were a throw back for us since Tims used to sell chocolate-covered, cherry-filled donuts years ago when we first stopped at a Tims in Lockport, New York. It was a fun visit to the past.

We finished our afternoon with a quiet walk in a pleasant nature preserve in Crawford County.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

3 February 2013 New Snowshoes

Ali gave me new snowshoes for my birthday. I was starting to think I would not get to wear them this winter. Not to worry as we were able to enjoy a fun ramble today. The snowshoes were great despite my appearing to wear them on the wrong feet... oops. :-O

Saturday, April 20, 2013

2 February 2013 Heat!

Our heat went off in the house in mid-December. I'm not sure we've ever been away from the home for this long. It's back and warm so we were determined to make a visit this weekend. The weather stinks. Ali drove through snow the entire trip. We stopped in town for a pizza from the Galley rather than cook. The streets of Youngsville are usually quiet, but the snow covered roads were nearly deserted this evening.

1 February 2013 Geocaching at 16 degrees

Sometimes even really cold days call for a cache find. It was a cold lunch break from the office, but I was able to find a couple caches. On the way back to the geomobile, I spotted the marker below with a great sentiment.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

19 January 2013 Marion County GeoTrail Part 2

We were back to finish the Marion County GeoTrail. We actually finished the geotrail and had stopped at Tim Horton's for a little celebration when I realized I had not kept the codes from our prior trip in my camera. They were at home on the hard drive. No codes. No coin. At least we've learned to have fun in Marion County while geocaching. Despite the disappointment over the coin, we will get to enjoy another visit to Marion County. In the meantime, we had a great afternoon. Among our stops we got to see a really strong artesian spring. We closed off our evening with a nice, quiet walk at a park and a pleasant sunset.





13 January 2013 Tree Toes

Sunday, April 07, 2013

12 January 2013 Marion County

With no heat at the house in Pennsylvania, we stayed in Ohio for a little weekend caching. The Marion County GeoTrail was released in 2012 and has been on our to do list. A cold winter's day with no snow was a great time to head southwest for this trail. The caches are very easy physically and not challenging to find, but feature some interesting areas of history.

Our first stop on the geotrail was in the small town of Caledonia. The great doors below are from a church in Caledonia which is listed on the National register of Historic Places. Caledonia was the boyhood home of future president Warren G. Harding for nine years of his youth. Besides the geotrail cache, we were able to find a multi here too.

Lynn School was active between 1897 and 1942. This restored schoolhouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It still appears to have most of the original desks and furnishings on the inside, but was not open for a visit when we were here.

This huge bucket is about all that remains in Marion of the Marion Steam Shovel Company. The company was purchased and closed on 1997 by a rival, but for those who remember the glory days of NASA spaceflight, this was the company that built the 6 million-pound NASA crawlers that moved spaceships from the hangers to the launch pads at Kennedy Space Center. They are an amazing bit of manufacturing history.

Marion has an interesting train depot. It is in nice shape from the outside, but wasn't open to walk in. The fancy brick walkways at the depot are from a different time.

The Marion County Courthouse is another of the local county buildings listed on the National Register. The building has a series of interesting reliefs in a band around the building.

Marion has a different way to move power around the city with these power standards in alleyways.

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

11 January 2013 Along the Maumee

I was in Columbia City to finish the trip I started in December. On the way home, I stopped for some caches along a bike trail beside the Maumee River. The trail was a mud oit, but I was caching. :-) It was nice to get a glimpse of a world not covered in snow.

6 January 2013 Bradley Woods at Dusk

5 January 2013 Hiding a Cache in South Chagrin

It was a perfect day to be on the trails. We wanted to hide a cache on the Song Bird trail in South Chagrin. It is a scenic trail and has not had a geocache since we've been caching. The hilly sections of the trail were really icy, but we were able to enjoy a long walk.