16 July 2011 Columbiana County

We always enjoy a visit to Columbiana County. For the last few years, our summer visits have been driven by the Ohio State Parks geocaching series. This year there is no series so we went to different places. Our first stop was along the large bike trail in the county. We hiked about four miles on the bike trail and were able to grab a few finds along the way. The old rail bed is a hot spot for wild life. There are a few ponds and some wetlands which attract wild life.

Moo! The calf standing just at the edge of the barn door was mooing so much finally mom stuck her head out to see what was causing the commotion.

This area had all the makings of a great geocaching stop. It is located on reclaimed strip mining land and had some high terrain caches. The caches hadn't been found since last fall so there was extra incentive. We had a lot of fun with the first two hides. When we were going from the second to third hide, we were walking across the bare dirt in the flat bottom area of the lower photo. We had both just commented on how soft the ground was when I sunk over my knees in this grey muck. I was really worried about getting out since the stuff acted like quick sand. I didn't want Ali to sink in trying to assist so I struggled and finally freed myself. My pen was gone, my new hiking boots were trashed, and my clothes were covered in some unknown slime. I have no idea what chemicals are used in strip mines so I was really concerned for chemical exposure.

I didn't want to go back to the car with the wet grey muck and contaminate the car so we stayed on the trail in as much sun as possible to dry off. The rest of the caches didn't deliver. It seemed like any cache hidden in tree cover had terrible coordinates. We ended with at least as many dnf's as finds. I was happy to get away once the slime on my pants had dried.

We ended our day with a nice walk along the NCT. The North Country Trail gets a lot of attention in Pennsylvania and is a nice hiking trail under the name Finger Lakes Trail in New York, but the Ohio stretches are just basically there. There appears to be little traffic and the section we were on appeared to have damage from the ever present ATV riders. Too bad, it's a wonderful county and this section of trail could be a gem.

28 June 2009 One Sunday - Three Counties - Three State Parks







We were getting tired, but were determined to finish this series. We hoped to finish with GG by the end of the week so today was three counties and three parks. Quail Hollow marked our starting point. Much of the park is a sanctuary to poison ivy so I was happy to see this one come and go. At least a few of the caches were in the wetlands and wooded section of the park. That area is by far the park's best. We enjoyed a couple finds on the trail there.

We left Quail Hollow and made our way to Guilford. Guilford has little land on the outer edge of a lake and doesn't give many opportunities for caches. The 19-park challenge cache could almost be retrieved from the car, but there is a nice little walk in the woods from that parking are and one of the caches in the 5-park series was back there. The last cache we retrieved was near a pedestrian bridge alongside the backside of the dam. It was a nice hide at a place we've never visited in this park. We left the kayak cache for a different day. We've been told, it's a couple of hours of kayaking by persons that are better with paddles than we are. I hope we get the time to return for that before the end of the summer.

Our last stop of the day was at Mosquito Creek. I never had a high opinion of this place when I boated and fished. It was always overrun with too many boats at the docks and too much horsepower on the water. In recent years visiting this place on foot to geocache has given me a different view of what I now consider to be a nice, pleasant park. My memories of this night though are dim. By the time we arrived here, a week of travel and two days of hard caching had wiped me out. Ali was driving and hunting caches by this point. I merely walked along beside her. I remember the early stages of the walk. We had never neen here before and the start of the trail and woods looked nice.

27 June 2009 Beaver Creek








I expected to be useless today after a week of traveling. Instead I was ready to go and spend a day at one of my favorite places, Beaver Creek. Over the years, we've come really close to either buying property here or moving here. It was the first place we went hiking so every visit is special. Today we were chasing caches for two Ohio State Park Challenges. After all these years and all these visits, Todd Metz, was able to take us to yet a new place we hadn't explored here. It was a quiet stream area filled with the leaves of many wildflowers that had bloomed earlier in the year.

On the way out of our first cache, Ali spotted a mother with her baby raccoons. They were trying to scramble back into the tree and out of site. Their cute when they are little (and in the middle of the woods, not picking trash... )

25 August 2007 Beaver Creek Sprucevale Road









Our early evening stop was to find a quartet of caches we missed when we were here with Lep last month. We had been back in this area many years ago to fish the stream. On that visit we hugged the shore. This evening we were heading up and away. The hiking was really treacherous for most of the way out. We were hugging a rock face for a good portion of the way. The third cache went beyond the rock face to a section fo woods where there was a primitive horse trail. It was a really serene area and a big surprise. The cache was very near a clearing in a nice stretch of woods. Our last cache was back down the horse trail to a stream called Long's Run. By the time we reached Long's Run, it was pouring. We found the cache, but the intense rain robbed us of the chance to visit a very scenic place we had never visited before.


I was really concerned about the rain and the rock face between us and safety, but we negotiated it easily and quickly. As we finished the hike, the rain was gone and the last remnants of the day were giving the show in these pictures. The post sunset shot was taken about five minutes from Beaver Creek at an RC plane field. We hunted this last cache as darkness fell.

25 August 2007 Beaver Creek State Park Nature







It's still butterfly time. Somedays you are in the right place. The butterfly was photographed as we hiked the lower Vondergreen trail by Beaver Creek. The spider on the web was hanging out along the Dogwood Trail. She was rather unhappy that I ticked the web when I was trying to get this photo. The second spider was really large and unexpected. It jumped out when I removed a rock from a cache on the trail near Sprucevale Road.