20 April 2014 Vinton and Jackson Counties - Visiting Moonville

I wanted to visit Moonville and find the caches during our February trip, but the daylight was too short and I still wasn't up to the trip. It was good that we waited. We were treated to butterflies and spring wildflowers on a day with perfect weather. The tunnel was a fun walk and we enjoyed all the caches.

The Moonville Tunnel is an easy walk. The other end is clearly visible from the entry. The Moonville stones above the tunnel entrance are missing a few letters, the markings of an old town that no longer exists are clearly there. If you can look past the obscenities and racial trash, there are interesting bits of graffiti on the walls of the tunnels.

Once we passed through the tunnel, we were treated to butterflies and spring wildflowers. There's nothing left of Moonville, but we did find the old cache we were hunting.

This zebra swallowtail was a special treat on today's journey.

Female red-wing blackbirds are hard to spot. We were lucky to spot this one near a covered bridge at a fairground.

19 April 2014 Visiting Meigs County

We were taking opportunity of a weekend in the Athens area to visit nearby Meigs County and do some caching. We were looking for caches, but were also treated to a great show of trilliums. It was a super, spring day.

We stopped for an unplanned cache on our journey. It was a regular size and had a higher terrain rating so it was a perfect fit for us. I was really happy to spot a suspension bridge we needed to cross while we were both happy to find sessile trilliums and a nice rock formation at the cache site. It was an unplanned good surprise on our journey.

18 April 2014 Strouds Run State Park

Strouds Run was a highlight show of spring. There were wildflowers everywhere. The wilflowers combined with miles of high-terrain trail and many, many caches made this a wonderful way to start the weekend. We left dozens of unfound caches in the park despite hours of hiking.

17 April 2014 Burr Oak State Park

I had to travel to Nashville on Monday so a visit to Pennsylvania was out. Since we had such a great time in Athens, Ohio in February, we decided to return for a second visit. We had stopped at Burr Oak State Park during the February trip for one quick find as the sun went down. We planned to stop on our way home, but the weather got bad. Today, we had time to stop and enjoy the park more fully. The terrain was perfect for us, and the wildflowers were a nice warm-up for the weekend.

We spotted this heron just before it took flght.

13 April 2013 Spring on the Eddy

Phineas spends too much time on the internet.

It was a perfect day to walk our property. We always look for the hepatica flowers in bloom each spring. This year we would be traveling and would miss the blooms, but we were able to spot the leaves. We also spotted our first colts foot of the spring.

12 April 2014 Akely Swamp

We made our way from Warren PA to New York for a visit to Akely Swamp. We don't get to visit this location very often, but it never fails to deliver some sort of fun wildlife sighting. This afternoon, we were able to spot multiple scaups swimming around the pond while also seeing a kingfisher and the usual multitude of red-wing blackbirds.

11 April 2014 Quiet Walk at Whitlam Woods