Pennsylvania Ammo Can

 Steel ammo cans were so much easier to paint than plastic ones.  This one in Somerset County had a well done fall maple leaf pattern.

Rock The Cache Box

 When you find a cache called Rock the Cache Box...  you should be hearing Rock the Casbah in your head.

The place where this cache was located was a good trail for some nice hides and interesting challenges.

Cloud 9 Visit

 In the 1960's Cloud 9 was a small amusement park located on Mount Herman in Olean New York.  Dave w/o id has hidden fourteen caches on the land now owned by the city of Olean.  There is a 15th cache hidden in the area by another hider.

The caches are given high terrain ratings with a trail that takes about three hours to complete.

There are some great views

And some interesting old pieces of the Cloud 9 past.

If you're looking for yet another Fizzy grid, this series will fill a few.  There are a few interesting and creative hides mixed in.  Start your journey here.

Geocaching Goals in a COVID World

 For some cachers COVID seems like bonus caching time for them.  The same is not true for me.  I work for a company which is almost entirely supporting essential business so we have stay operational except for one of my sites.  We don't want to put ourselves at risk or increase the possibility of spreading COVID so our travel has been minimal.  We expected to end the year at or very near 19,000 finds.  With 18,416 that is way out of reach.

Instead of thinking of what we haven't done, we've been thinking of a reasonable goal for the remainder of the year.  Our year so far is light on finds.

We are always behind in logging so there are still some finds to log, but it is certain 2020 will be our fourth year in sixteen full years of caching with fewer than 1000 finds.  We used to always try for three caches per day average, but life doesn't always work that way.

I'm hoping now we can do a little fall caching (and a few weeks of winter) to at least exceed our first full year of caching.

We'll see...

Great Footbridge Hide

 I've seen at least one of these before in Oklahoma.  Both were really well done hides.  Both were placed with permission.

All Aboard Knox County's C.A.&C. Geotrail

We visited Knox County in 2019 to find the park caches in their first geotrail. This year, we were back in the county visiting a super bike trail located on the path of the old C.A.& C (Cleveland, Akron, and Columbus) Railroad. We started our journey in Centerburg and employed a minion to hail our train.

There were enough interesting sights to keep our nature nerd side happy.

Buckeyes are less common in northeast Ohio.  The streamside trees were bearing fruit.

The Mount Vernon depot is a nicely preserved example of an old small town station.  It appeared to be closed from COVID.  If not, I would have stepped inside to see the remaining railway artifacts.

We made a detour from the Knox Trail to visit the Brown Family Environmental Center for a walk in the wildflower fields and the pine plantation.

I enjoyed this old twin trestle on the journey.

2020 is the 80th anniversary of this Alco's build.

Ali says come down, we'll finish the trail tomorrow.

With only a pair of caches left in the series we started our day in Westerville completing the Adventure Lab.  We made the cache near the Bridge of Dreams covered bridge our last in the series.  We enjoyed the bridge, but this stop concerned me most of the journey.  The bridge area was crowded with little mask usage.  We wore ours, but still felt at risk.

As a reward for completing the trail we were sent a coin.  It is a really attractive design and a nice memento of a fun journey.  This is the second Knox County geotrail we have completed.  Both were well done and very enjoyable.

Like last year's coin, this one is not trackable.  We have used a new trackable code to make the coin trackable.  It can be found here if you wish to discover.