4 April 2010 Spring Wildflowers and Our Vernal Pond








Our vernal pond has four different types of eggs this spring, wood frogs, green frogs, red efts, and spotted salamanders. The pond was being guarded by two wood frogs while some red efts were in the pond eating frog eggs. It's really busy for a small pond.

3 April 2010 Feeding the Fish in St. Mary's

Flu


It's been a long time since I had a fever of 104. I felt tired for a couple of days and really beat Friday morning. I needed to go to the office for a meeting and was going to call it a day a little early. By 10 I couldn't stop shaking and decided to go home. My fever's been running its course, down to 103 by Saturday, 101 something today. Other than last year at Shenandoah, I can't remember being off-line for over 48 hours in years. I can't remember effectively being in bed for 32 hours. My temp keeps dropping and there's images somewhere to post so maybe in a day or so... Ali's been amazing with two males in the house (Sandy the cat) both being sick.

2 April 2010 Forest County


We hadn't planned to be in Forest County today. We were planning to be out finishing the first half of the Enchanted Mountain GeoTrail in Cattaraugus County. We were loading the gps's in the morning and realized that one of the two remaining EMGT caches was disabled. We missed the other remaining cache last fall when the cache owner disabled it for hunting season. Besides the wonderful counties we got to visit, one of the best things about the Allegheny Geotrail is that cachers weren't required to find ALL the caches to be eligible for a coin. The one that is disabled now doesn't appear to be going active before mid-May. We really enjoyed the EMGT last year, but there is a limit to how much tourism groups can be expected to make cachers spend before awarding coins. We're re-thinking doing the EMGT at all this year.

The EMGT's loss was our gain. We made a last minute decision to head to Forest County for some caching. It is a neighboring county that always seems to have unfound caches for us. Our major target was a friend's cache, Water Your Horse. Water Your Horse is friends' 5 terrain cache we never seem to drive out and find. There have been so many days when we could have and should have, but today we did. I'm sure there are many great days in any given year to find this gem, today seemed perfect to us.


Water Your Horse
It was quite a day for frogs






There is something quite calming about being in the woods alongside a stream.





We crossed the stream here.






This old viaduct was just before a long, gone bridge that crossed the stream.





It's hard to believe that this old, dirt road once carried car traffic. At least one car didn't make it across the bridge. It used to be light blue.





The pool in front of this riffle is quite large and very deep.





The latest in campground leisure furniture, the Adirockdack chair with matching table





Ali said the chair she is modeling actually was set-up to recline.







After our adventures at Water Your Horse, we made a few more finds in the ANF near Amsler Spring before making our way home.






This iron work was a flower on a large arch over a dirt road leading into the woods. There still appears to be a structure at the back. The arch seemed a real contrast to the surrounding forest.

1 April 2010 Carman Covered Bridge


The Carman Covered Bridge used to cross this stream on this quiet little road. As luck (or fate) would have it, the bridge was struck by lightning in the 90's and burned down shortly after being placed on the National Register of Historic Places. At the time of the lightning strike, it was one of four remaining covered bridges in Erie County.

31 March 2010 Missing Stage




This was the fourth trip four us to North Chagrin to find the second stage of our now archived cache. Once again, we had no luck. This isn't the first time we cannot find a cache we have hidden. There is a cache in a park near our home that we hid and cannot find. The sad thing is that a friend of ours can always find it. Whenever it needs maintenance, our friend goes to the park and checks on it and does maintenance since he knows we can't find it. Tonight, I had a better shot at catching up with that plane flying overhead than finding stage two. We finally have given up and hope it truly is gone.

30 March 2010 Listening for Spring Peepers







It's springtime so it's once again time for Ali to amuse me as I search out the perfect peeper chorus. :-) The Rookery is always a good place to start. The peepers were strong and loud, but not as many as some years. Ali was also able to spot a muskrat before we continued on the trail. At the other wetland area we saw our first herons of the season near the rookery. During our walk back at sunset, Ali spied a beaver in the wetlands area. It looks like they are working on a new lodge.

After we returned to the parking area, we walked over to the shorter trail to listen for a woodcock. We were twice lucky with one on either side of the trail. We got to hear and see one take flight and spied another heron passing overhead before calling it an evening.

29 March 2010 Malleys


Our friend Rich was on his way to Shenandoah for vacation so we wanted to give him our books and maps to use on his trip. It sounded like a good reason for ice cream.



The ice cream parlor wasn't very busy this evening. Most of the customers were in the store looking for Easter candy. The line fluctuated from a handful to a dozen or so while we were there. No chocolates for me, but the ice cream was good as always (pineapple sundae with chocolate ice cream=yum) and the company was grand.



It seems like there is always a market for a really big bunny. Chocolate bunnies were my least popular at Easter when I was a kid and often went un-eaten. Let's face it, Peeps rock for Easter candy. Still, I am always fascinated with why big bunnies are popular. Billy Bunny is about 2 feet tall, hollow and weighs over two pounds. At $25 for an undecorated Billy Bunny and $30 for a decorated Billy Bunny I really wasn't sure who would go for Billy, but there was a popular table of them. I liked the two-packs of Billy Bunny in the pink bag. Were customers supposed to hope the pair would do what comes naturally with bunnies?



Chocolate covered Twinkies brought to you by the candy company that makes chocolate covered bacon. Their ice cream is much better than the chocolate offerings.

27 March 2010 Caching East


The Euclid Township School was built in 1866. We DNF'd the cache here, but got the opportunity to see this nice, historical school.



Rockefeller Center is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a little rough around the edges, but one of the amazing sites to see in the Heights area. One could travel around for months documenting the amazing things that were put here many years ago.





We were waiting out some muggles at Euclid Creek and wandered down the path. This waterfall was visible from the trail, but had trees and shrubs blocking the majority of the view. I was surprised to see how tall it is.

26 March 2010 Watching the Ducks

25 March 2010 Early Rattlesnake Plantain Leaves

24 March 2010 Gamelands Sunset

22 March 2010 Cruisers Cafe