16 March 2013 East Branch

Since Eva has become quite good at evading her e-collar and removing stitches and staples we need to ride with her when we travel. It's been an interesting change. Eva and Gwen have always been crated for safety when they travel. To protect her surgical closures until they heal, we've been riding shotgun with her in the backseat. Our vet also wanted the extension added to her e-collar so I added blue foam with a fashionable leopard-print duct tape. I'm glad Eva's not too fashion picky. ;-)

It was wonderful to be out and walking. Eva did well and seems to be recovering from her surgery. We dnf'd a puzzle final, but nabbed the latest Geauga Park District cache. We had the park alone on this peaceful afternoon.

12 March 2013 Nice Camo

I found this nicely painted geocache on an after-work walk at a local park.

10 March 2013 Park Walks

Our dog Eva's a gentle soul. Her mast cell tumors have started to arrive more frequently. She just had multiple removed in a long surgery. Two of them were along a joint in her leg leading to uncomfortable stitches. The day before we had gone for a short walk in two local parks to spend some time together. Eva was wearing her e-collar, but managed to get around the collar and remove a number of stitches. Our vet was wonderful and spent her Saturday evening re-closing Eva's incision, but it was clear we had to be with her at all times or else she would try removing the sutures. Ali spent the late morning and early afternoon away from the house while I took the late afternoon and early evening to get some time out. I stopped for a walk at Punderson State Park followed by a visit to West Woods. There was still a little snow on the trails and the ponds were partially iced over, but the birds sounded great and I was able to spot the season's first colts foot.

9 March 2013 Visiting Acacia Park

A second golf course/country club in the area has been sold and turned into a local park. We were looking for a place to walk on a cold day and decided to take a walk at Acacia. The old country club has been sold and converted into a Cleveland Metropark. It will be interesting to see how this and Geauga's Orchard Hills finally develop as parks, but today it was a pleasant walk. We were treated to a buck and a golden eye duck on our walk.

3 March 2013 Almost Home

2 March 2013 1,000 Caches

Gwen and Eva cache with us often. We track their cache visits through a travel bug tag. They were very close to 1,000 caches visited today so I drove from the Pennsylvania house to meet Ali at Woodcock Lake. We still had lots of caches to hunt here and plenty of miles to walk on the trail. The water was open today as spring inched closer to arriving.

24 Feburary 2013 Walking the Reservoir

We stopped for a few caches hidden at Union City Reservoir. It was a peaceful walk along the frozen shoreline. We were surprised to find we weren't the only visitors today.

23 February 2013 Visiting Woodcock

Woodcock Reservoir is a very pleasant place to walk. Since it is on the "southern" route of our trip to Pennsylvania, we only visit in the winter and usually with snow on the ground. Today was no different. A local geocacher had placed a series of caches along the old road that was flooded when the reservoir was created. It was a fun walk and a great way to pass a winter's day.

I had mentioned to a colleague the day before that I expected to find skunk cabbage on this outing. It was late in the afternoon before I spotted the first of the season, but a few had melted a patch of snow in a wet area. By the time we finished, the light was fading. Our last hunt was a dnf near an old abandoned Chevy. The car must have driven off the road or wrecked long ago when the road was still in service.

20 February 2013 Late Valentine

We don't make a huge event of Valentine's Day, but it has become tradition for us to stop and enjoy ice cream together at a Malley's. The past few years, I've missed a few more of those 'special' days together while traveling for business. This year, I needed to be in North Carolina on Valentine's Day so we celebrated this evening. We were the only patrons in the ice cream area. We're used to spending Valentine's evening with a full-house at this retro ice cream palace. It was a little weird with no one else there, but we got to be together for a quiet evening.

17 February 2013 Blue and White

Two colors in the pallet would have captured the day today. We spent a bright, sunny afternoon on the Maple Highlands Trail finding a few geocaches with Gwen and Eva.

15 February 2013 Big Muskie

I've wanted to stop and see the Big Muskie bucket as long as I've been traveling to Salisbury. When coal was big industry in large areas of southeastern Ohio, the Big Muskie was the king of the hill. The only thing that remains of the huge piece of equipment is the scoop bucket. I got an early start working in the hotel room and was on the road with enough time to finally drive the extra fifty miles to see Big Muskie. It was the middle of February and it started snowing lightly while I was still in West Virginia, but had stopped by the time I reached Ohio. The lure of Big Muskie and the chance to cache in Morgan County won out over common sense. By the time I was headed back to I77 there were nearly white-out conditions. It was a long slow drive north until I cleared the snow, but seeing Big Muskie was amazing.

The image below is in the kiosk at the park. Wow, it was huge. The countryside in this area was forever altered by coal mining. This machine was a big part of that history.

The steps leading into the scoop give a great idea of the size.

The overlook beyond Big Muskie shows the land where the big scoop roamed. The area has been forever altered by Big Muskie.