22 June 2008 Bloomin' Eddy














We stayed near the house for most of the day. The day before, we had purchased some perennials and the property had reached that point of uncontrolled green. I needed to mow and plant so our trail day was limited to a short walk at the nearby state forest. The photos are from our property with a few from the forest preserve. It's that time of year where it takes work to spot blossoms, but they are worth the effort.

21 June 2008 Finding a New Trail





Tzach Cache





A Really Wet Osprey



The Old Road





Gwen Resting Before The Hike Back



Newer cachers placed their first cache, Tzach Cache, on a trail in the ANF we had never walked. It was an amazing experience. The trail started with a mean uphill, but flattened out and walked us through huge old rocks. The one in this post looked like the bow of a monstrous ship. The trail then wound back down into a ravine with a small stream running between the rocks. The dogs had a great time splashing in the stream.

After that we dodged a lot of rain drops. We stopped by to see the osprey in the nesting platform on Kinzua Reservoir. The photo shows how intense the rain was.

Our last stop was a big dnf. We have wanted to search for a cache for some time. The only way into the cache seems to be on a private road. A few months ago we found an old road through the ANF that seemed to be a direct path to the cache. The cache was about 1.8 miles from parking as the crow flies so we thought we had a chance of reaching it. The old road is pretty faint at times, but we got within a half-mile of the cache before we gave up. We had at least another hour of tough hiking and the dogs were showing their fatigue. We were disappointed, but still had a chance to explore an area we had never seen before.

20 June 2008 County Hunting on the Way Home







Remains of a stile



Chimney Rocks





Mothra visits Dunns Eddy



We needed 14 more counties to have a find in all counties in Pennsylvania. I was trying to get four counties on the way home. I got three. My first stop took me to Chambersburg. We've stayed in Chambersburg a few times when traveling in PA. The town has an outstanding Italian restaurant and is a good travel distance. This time my travels brought me here to hunt caches.

My first stop should have been a nice multi and might have made the favorites, if I had found it. Stage one was information gathering (done). Stage 2 was crossing a wide and deep stream by tightroping over a downed tree. Before climbing onto the tree, I snapped the duck photo. I got across the tree; didn't fall in; and didn't drop any electronics in the water :-). I also spent over a half hour searching for a cache I couldn't find :-(. After waiting out a storm, I continued my journey and grabbed three in the county including one near the stream pictured at the site of an old dam.

For the second county, I went about ten miles out of my way to find a cache in the Game Lands near an old Civil War battle site. The site was the spot where the Union Army set up lines to stop the Confederate advance on Altoona. The stiles made by the Union troops are still quite visible along the side of the road. After a visit to the historic site and a tough cache find in the woods, it was on to the last county.

My last stop was at Chimney Rocks. The site would make a great earth cache. It was a fun hike with some really nice views. The hour was late when I left and it was a long drive home, but now there's only eleven unfound counties left. Maybe on a return trip I can get rid of the wimpy ones on the county map ;-).

When I called home, Ali told me all about this amazing moth on the side door. I was in luck and it was still there. I wish the photo quality were better, but it is an amazing creature.

18 June 2008 Back From Syracuse





I was in Syracuse for one of our large sales meetings (where was I when Hawaii was a site? :-O). I needed to get back to Carlisle for work so we passed by some great looking cache locations on the way. In Carlisle, there was a big car show during the weekend so I ended up with a room a few towns away. I was really beat and didn't do much caching. I dnf'd the micro (we stink at micros) at this little spot, but thought the tree was super.

17 June 2008 A Quiet Evening in a Gamelands and a Park








My second evening in Carlisle was filled with a long walk in the nearby gamelands and a second walk at a nearby park. The gamelands walk was through open fields while most of Middlesex Community Park is wooded. It was a nice balance for a near-summer evening.

16 June 2008 Relaxing After Work in Carlisle






Once the rain stopped, I made my way to this quiet arboretum and park. There was a fun puzzle cache here.

14 June 2008 Columbiana County with GeaugaGarmin









This was our first day of chasing the ODNR 2008 series. The weather didn't cooperate as it rained a lot later than was promised, but we found the caches at Beaver Creek and Guilford plus a few in between. By the time we were headed to Guilford we had blue skies and a nice late-spring day.

11 June 2008 Bedford Gorge with the denverchickenfarmer

Ali surfing a tippy rock near the viaduct

Check out the plush chicken. Goat Haunt's mountain goat has some competition for best mascot.

It was day two of a couple fun evenings out with our friend. We decided to stop at Bedford Gorge for the evening. There is a nice waterfalls in the gorge, an engineering marvel viaduct, a lot of history, and oh.. yeah... caches :-). I was really ready to tackle the viaduct, but the water was too high. Oh well, some day. The cache on the other side of the gorge was outstanding. I really wanted to get a photo of the tunnel from the other side and climbed down to stream level after we found the cache. I also realized that one of the local youth had decided she wanted to be topless among her friends in the water so I decided to pass on photos.

10 June 2008 Caching with Denver Chicken Farmer





My friend from our Columbia City operation was in town for a couple of days. Ali drove to Solon and joined us after work for an evening of caching in Twinsburg. The Re-Loaded Goat remains one of our favorite caches and still a tough find. We our fun caching evening included a trip to this cache so Mike could enjoy the hunt.

8 June 2008 Meeting on the Trail







We were caching at Irvine Run today. We had found three of the four caches on the trail and stopped to watch some adult salamanders in the water. We were just walking back to the trail from our third find when we heard a muggle. It was really hot and the swamp was wet so we were a little surprised. We were even more surprised when she said can you show me on your gps where the parking lot is? It was then we noticed her gos and realized the muggle was really a cacher. We had a pleasant visit with a wonderful cacher from Kentucky. She was actually looking for our Rainbow Bridge cache. She had a picture of her beloved dog (a cutie). We spent some time. She went on her way. It was nice meeting another cacher on the trail. :-)

We saw these wild iris as we were walking along the old fish ponds. After walking these trails for years we saw a new sight on our walk.