30 April 2011 Caching the Western Basin

We planned to drive to East Harbor and hunt a few multis. I used to spend a lot of time at East Harbor as a youth. It was a favorite place for me to go with my friends when I was in high school and college so I am always happy to return for a visit. Since we had seen a number of warblers the evening before, we decided to stop at Sheldon Marsh with the expectations of a big birding walk.

Our surprise when we got to Sheldon Marsh was there were very few birds for watching. We spotted a few egrets in the marsh and saw a snake with a big bulge waiting for its last meal to digest. The big find of our walk was a nice spotting of pie-billed grebes.

We cut our walk at Sheldon Marsh short and headed to East Harbor and some caching. Once at East Harbor, we were pleasantly surprised to spot a number of warblers including a nice yellow warbler which I actually managed to capture in an image. We found a multi and dnf's a multi before heading to West Harbor.

There was a multi and a cache we were pretty certain was buried in the sand along the beach. We bombed the multi and never found stage 1. We also spent a lot of fruitless time digging in the sand for the second cache. After we had given up on both, we decided to dirty cache the multi. After looking at a number of spots, Ali found the final for the multi. :-)

We were on our way back to the parking lot when we noticed another person walking towards us. we both commented that it looked like our friend Chris. Imagine our surprise when we realized it was our friend Chris. What kind of coincidence is it when three Geauga County cachers are at the same park many counties away? We said hi to Chris and found he had been at a nearby family function and decided to try avenging his dnf at the beach cache. He offered to share the hunt with us. It was an easy yes to spend some time visiting with a friend.

Chris had brought his small hand-held metal detector since the cache was supposed to be below a plate. we returned to the area and began searching again with Ali marking off a grid; Chris sweeping to detect the plate; and me digging to bring up the cache. After some searching we found the plate, but no cache below. Still, we had a lot of fun playing pirates on the beach. After our search we went off to see if we could spot a few benchmarks. We located one near the start of the pier. I took a wet walk down the pier to look for a second, but had no luck.

This is a tough way to fish.

Arrrh... muggled.

It was a wet walk out looking for a second benchmark.

29 April 2011 Listening for Peepers

Lots of peepers and birds too on our short walk this evening. The mushroom looked like a small lamp with the sunlight passing through.

27 April 2011 Wildflowers at Meztenbaum

26 April 2011 Trout Lily at Sunnybrook

23 April 2011 Exploring the Minister Creek Area

Our stream was running about as high as we have ever seen, but the wildflowers were everywhere. Our hepatica was about a week away from its full glory.

After a nice walk at our place, we headed to the Minister Creek area to replace a group of our caches along a trail and to once again hunt the Minister Creek Overlook cache.

It was amphibian day on the trails. We were surprised to spot a couple red-backed salamanders on our walk. We also got to see many red efts in the abundant vernal pools along the trail.

We searched for the Minister Creek Rocks cache last fall without a find. We knew the owner had replaced the cache with a larger one and wanted to return for a find. Today we made the find, and were treated to huge clusters of hepatica in bloom along the middle section of the trail.

22 April 2010 Old Farm in Crawford

21 April 2011 Cleveland skyline from Chapin Forest overlook

17 April 2011 Corry Rail Trail

Yesterday's rain finally cleared out in the afternoon, and we wanted some walking. There were new caches along the Corry Rail Trail so we made this a stop on the way home. We were really amazed at the number of bloodroot along the trail, It was the most we had ever seen in one spot. Most of them weren't open yet, but they were still impressive.

I can't say much other than oops on this situation. The poor Toyota driver started on the green light across the bridge in front of me only to find half-way across the semi had run the light and was in the single-lane of the bridge. Guess who had to back up? (Think BIG) Unfortunately, the driver of the car could not back well. The rear passenger side got squished on the concrete barrier. :-(

16 April 2011 Lots of Water

We got to spend a wet morning walking the property hunting for signs of wildflowers. Our normally quiet stream was running strong.

Ali's ready for the rain.

This nice stream is located in the ANF near the AGT- Warren- Whispering Woods cache.

We actually spotted this bright rainbow in Clarendon when Ali saw a guy with a camera looking up towards the sky. The end of the rainbow is very close by.

Bubbles in a mud puddle at our last cache. We dnf'd this cache in the winter. Today we wondering how we missed it. The area has interesting history. It was one of the stops for a light rail line that used to move people around Warren County.

15 April 2011 Academia/Pomeroy Bridge

This 1902 beauty is the longest remaining covered bridge in Pennsylvania. It's out of the way and takes a little driving to visit, but it's a grand old bridge. The bridge is 270 feet long. It is nestled away from traffic on a quiet road with a picnic table nearby.

This is the first covered bridge I recall with thin decking planks perpendicular to the travel direction. It was an interesting feature that an engineering geek couldn't pass by. ;-)

14 April 2011 Boiling Springs