THEY AIN'T NO DURRY QUEENS IN THE WILDERNESS

Yesterday Joyce and I took a day off from our busy schedules (why are you laughing?) and went for a long drive up past the Cass area and into Virginia. We also took along the GC'ing gear in hopes of "bagging a few" while out riding around. Little did we know that we were about to descend into what can only be described as a cultural wilderness.

We had driven up through Durbin (lunch at a local diner was surprising good) and then continued across Rt U.S.250 into Virginia, bagging caches as they appeared along our route.

Later, as we made our way towards home, it came to be time for the now customary ice cream stop-and not a Dairy (pronounced Durry--don't ask) Queen to be found. In fact, as we mentally reviewed our travels up to that point, we realized that we were in what can only be described as a Durry Queen wasteland. Not one had we seen all day!!

Then, rescue in Churchville VA!! Not a Dairy Queen, but a useable substitute. Thank goodness for the Tastee Freez. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to survive.

5 for 5 on the day and no DNF's.

By the way, if you are reading this you may be called upon to post bail at some point in the future. We tend to run the back roads at what can only be described as criminally high speeds.

WG & WH803 MAKE THE FTF (with an oddity thrown it)

If you've read along much at all, you know what most of the title means: Wiscongranny (wife person Joyce) and Woodhick803 (me) made the First Time Find on a cache.

FTF'ing, recording that special first time find, is one of the little extras in the geocaching world. It's fun for some reason, being the first one to that new and shiny hide. The owner is waiting with bated (well maybe not entirely) breath hoping that someone will hurry to his or her newly concealed treasure chest. And sometimes there's an extra gift for those who make that one time only find. A little money, a store gift card, an extra clever toy or...who knows what awaits the FTF'er.

Today we headed out early for the Cranberry Glades Wilderness and Monongahela National Forest to search for one of those newly hidden treasure boxes & we were successful in our hunt.

A short and pleasant walk on a clear and wonderfully cool morning (the entire East Coast has been under a heat wave the past few weeks) took us to within a few yards of the cache. Then it was a short bush whack to a likely site & voila!! We found it!!

Wiscongranny shows off our find. Note the FTF gift bag. Like most everything stored or hidden in a cache it's a simple ziploc bag--where would hikers and hiders be without them?? Note too, that's real money in there. $10.00 worth!! And like other FTF cash we've found, it will never be spent, but rather it will be placed on our growing shelf of swag--Stuff We All Get--remember?? Our shelf of toys and treasures now holds several FTF goodie bags too. How cool is that--if you are a geocacher that is.

Look again at the open cache Wiscongranny is displaying. See the small item dangling down the front?? Kind of hard to make out, but it's a travel bug (TB) attached to a stuffed mermaid figure, officially named "Marlee the Mermaid". Now here's the oddity of our find and picking up the Mermaid TB, it is owned by my sister BatikFreak10. She had placed it several weeks ago in one of her caches so that it could make its way to Key West FL, fitting country for a mermaid indeed. And I had no idea at all that Joyce and I would find it here in today's FTF cache. Odd indeed.

DAN GETS AN OWWY (OR TWO) WHILE BATIKFREAK10 & WISCONGRANNY TAKE THE FALLS

We were at it again this past Saturday-of course I mean Geocaching. We'd wanted to get out for the past few weeks but one thing or another always seemed to get in the way. Finally we were able to break free. And we had an excellent day, a good mixture of cache types, a place or two we'd never seen before, and excellent weather--a high of 70* in the middle of July. Of course, there was suffering too. More on that later.

We hit Camp Creek State Forest for our first find and then went on to the well known Brush Creek Nature Preserve for our second and third finds. We had never heard of the place either and were pleasantly surprised when we got there.

Mash Fork Falls at Camp Creek SF is suffering from the recent dry weather, but there is still a trickle. These falls, about 5 feet or less in height, will be beautiful with a little increased flow when fall arrives. Our caching find was nearby, within sight of the falls.


Then we moved on to our second and third finds of the day at Brush Creek Falls Nature Preserve.

American Gothic, Geocaching style.

Woodhick803 & Wiscongranny show off the best in summer Geocaching fashion.

Camp Creek State Forest and Brush Creek Preserve are both the sites of extensive logging operations in the early part of the 20th century. Much of the hiking we did in these natural areas was on the remains of old logging railroad grades. The tan/beige object just above the right most flow of water is the remains of a cut stone bridge pier. The RR tracks would have passed just above the falls back in the day.


We've been under a fairly long spell of dry weather recently, not too surprising in mid-summer. For a look at the Falls after some heavy rain, go here. Quite a difference.

Although I'm modeling the ever popular "Sonic Dog" bit of swag (yes, I took it home too), the finds around the two falls areas belong to BatikFreak10 and Wiscongranny, so to them goes the credit for "taking the falls"

We are always on the look out for an unusual find, and today's was an excellent example. The cache owner had hollowed out a section of log after slicing off a slab to serve as a top. The top keys into the hollow inside so that everything stays in place and looks natural. He (she?) then placed the log hide in a small area of woods in a city park in Princeton WV. Sure looks natural here too. An excellent hide.

Sometimes I think that Geocaching means "Let's go for ice cream" to Wiscongranny. A lot of her finds seem not to be caches, but Dairy Queens...but this one is not the best sit down restaurant in Princeton WV. Good ice cream though.

Finally, our 12th and last find for the day goes to BatikFreak10. This is a Travel Bug Spa (aka motel). As with a lot TB motels and spas, this one is located at a truck stop area and is designed as a repository for travel bugs making their way to ???, wherever their destinations may be.

Now for the pain and suffering part of the day. I'm not one to whine and complain, but it was a really tough day. I got some poison ivy on my left ankle, TWO WHOLE BUMPS!! And then I got scratched on my left elbow at another cache, THREE SCRATCHES!! LOL We had a fun day :-)

AFTERNOON DELIGHT

Not all geocaching expeditions are, well, expeditions. Sometimes you just want to get out for a few hours and "find a couple". Yesterday was one of those days.

When I mentioned to Wiscongranny (loyal wife person Joyce) that a new cache had just come up in the geocaching weekly newsletter and that it was located at Union WV, a small community less than 30 miles from our home, she jumped at the chance to say "let's go get it!!" And I have to say, who am I to object...I know my place.

So off we went for a nice ride and a couple of finds.

The Union Confederate Memorial was placed in 1901 by a group of local women. Union lies in Central Monroe Co WV. Greenbrier and Monroe Counties have more in common with VA than the rest of West VA and, like Greenbrier, was of strongly Confederate sympathies. The memorial was placed outside the town limits of Union so that as the town grew it would gradually surround the site. Now, 150 years later, the memorial still lies somewhat outside the actual town of Union. The site is quiet, peaceful and well kept.

As you can see, not much has changed except for the addition of those power lines in the foreground. This mansion dates from before the Civil War and would have been witness to fighting in the area. Some years ago a film entitled Sommersby was filmed in Virginia. Still existent slave quarters were purchased from the family here and moved to the filming location for use in the movie.

Our second (and final) find of the day was located near the water tower at the town of Lindside WV.

Like I said, not a big day with numerous finds, but rewarding none-the-less.

LUKE!!

My family visited here last week and I had a chance to take my Grandson Luke (AlcubierreWarp--Google it as two words) out for a small taste of Geocaching. I guess some switch must have gotten turned on by the experience. When he got home he took to caching like a duck to water, as the saying goes.

Luke, excuse me, AlcubierreWarp, sent me these shots of one of his earliest Geocaching trips at home in Illinois.

With over 200 caches within 20 miles or so of his home in Monticello, it looks to me like Luke can go Geocaching for a long time to come.

What you can't see here is the fact that when this shot was taken the temperatue is near 100*F!! Summer in IL can be as cold as the winters hot.

Good luck to my Grandson. I'm a blessed and happy man.

ODDITY

A quick note about one other find this past Sunday.

This travel bug--named Sweet Home Alabama--has just started on its trip to visit the 50 states. It is on only its fourth stop. But pause to checkout its travel history: It left Alabama a few weeks ago and with only one intermediate stop found its way to a cache I own. From there it traveled to a cache BatikFreak10 owns. Then Sunday I picked it up to move forward on a later caching expedition. In other words, this TB has made only four stops thus far, and three of those stops have been in my or Sallys' hands. Interesting.

ROOTS, RAIN, & THE BEST SIT DOWN RESTURANT IN MULLENS WV

Lots of things to talk about today. In a nutshell we had a busy, successful, and interesting day Geocaching yesterday. Grab a coffee, turn on the Ipod and let's get started.

Early morning (there are some who consider 9:30a.m. as early) found us back on the road. The first pic is, I suppose, kind of an Easter only cache, but it worked on a nice Sunday in June too. The cache is in the largest egg. Quick grab and go. This one was in the cache owners front yard so no problem with reaching into his property.

One of the caches on our "must seek" list for the day was located at the site of the baseball diamond at Tams WV, just a mile (or less) up the "holler" from Stotesbury. So we took the time to visit Stotesbury while in the area.

Quite some years ago (about 1950 to be exact) our dad worked for the Koppers Company as a company store manager. At that time he was based in the coal camp town of Stotesbury WV. Stotesbury, and its attendant mine was founded by the E. E. White Coal Company. There is a long and interesting history of Stotesbury available on line. Check it out here. The photos alone are worth the visit. Neither one of us had been back to Stotesbury since we were little kids and have fond memories of Dad and the store where he worked so hard.

BatikFreak10 (sister Sally) told me about going to the store for the day with Dad during the Christmas Season and touring the third floor toy display. The display must have seemed like a visit to Santas' workshop. I remember Dad taking me to the buyers display in Beckley WV where he would make toy selections for the coming Christmas Season at the Company Store. I'd look briefly at the toys for the "little kids" but would move quickly to the real stuff--the sleds, paint by number sets, and of course the forbidden B. B. guns. What a time!!

Dad and the friends and hangers on around the Company Store usually played horse shoes during their lunch break. Dad was supposed to have been one of the top players and had a "dead on" aim for the peg.

We knew that Stotesbury had pretty much ceased to exist many years ago--the mines long since played out and most everyone moved away. The church above now occupies the site of the Company Store. The store itself burnt about 1960. Interestingly, the church was moved from a nearby ridge (hillside to flatlanders) and positioned on the store site. Dad would have played those horse shoes right about where the picnic shelter now sits.

Stotesbury now consists of about 5 well maintained and properly kept up homes, but their origin as company housing is still quite obvious. Most of us picture coal camps as places of misery and squalor, and sadly sometimes we are right. But coal camps could also be places of happiness with a strong sense of community.

Our cache assignment was located at the Tams Ball Diamond site. Now completely reforested, the site gives little hint as to what it once was. But push through the rank undergrowth into the trees and civilization can be glimpsed. Cut stone, rusting sheet metal, broken tools are in evidence if you will but pause to look. We made a quick find and were on our way, leaving Tams and Stotesbury to the quiet past in the memories of those who lived, played, and worked there. More about Tams.

And now for the rain part of our adventure!! The shot below was snapped in extreme haste. I was far up on a ridge top, BF10 not far behind, with the almost constant crackle of thunder in our ears. Seconds after taking this shot we were deluged in a major Thunderstorm.

I signed some piece of paper I found in the cache for both of us. I have no idea whether it was the actual log or not, and then we dove for cover behind some nearby rocks. We were 50 feet or so below the top of the knob so weren't too worried about being struck by lightening but were scarcely out of the rain at all.

How do you photograph wet? Neither of us are professional photographers and all we had was our digital cameras, but we are well and truly wet to the core.

I have an idea: Want to experience how wet we were? Head out into the back yard, turn the hose on full force and have someone spray you--head to foot and everywhere in between-- for 15 or 20 minutes. Turn frequently, leaving no spot unsoaked. You'll get the idea.

But at the same time we were not overly uncomfortable. The day was warm, the rain warm also. In due course the rain stopped, clothes were wrung out and we continued on. Most of us think we simply cannot be wet, after all Mom said that it was so. But being wet in the summer can be a fairly negligible experience.

Fortunately lunch was actually before our shower. We are at the very best sit-down restaurant in Mullens WV. Like much of coal country, Mullens is not in the very best of shape economically. Truthfully I think this is perhaps the only sit-down restaurant (or perhaps the only restaurant of any kind) in Mullens WV.

Finally, we had a nice day and found some nice caches. We found some of our roots slightly the worse for wear, but still bright and shiny in our memories. What more can you ask.