Mountain Getaway

What can I say besides - I needed that.

My friend Dennie arrived from Ohio Thursday evening. I must be in Mother Natures good graces. It was nasty the day before he got here - it warmed up into the high 60’s the first day of his visit and the low 60’s the next. Today, Dennie is on his way home and the temps are once again in the low 30’s.

Friday we spent the day in the head of Peachtree hollow and Drews Creek. We were on a mission to pinpoint the mountaintop removal site I had been feeling the explosions from. I’m not going to get too much into that now. I have a post in draft talking about the new site. I will say this though, it hits a lot closer to home than I first thought.

At any rate - we were all over the head of those two hollows, spending nearly 8 hours roaming the backwoods. My mission was actually threefold - first and foremost was to make sure my buddy received a good dose of mountain air. I have lived in the Cleveland area. It feels good to come to the mountains.

The second - pinpoint the exact location of the new MTR site. The third - mark three cemeteries in the head of Peachtree and Drews Creek with a GPS for registration. One of which I wasn’t able to get to - another we could drive to - and the last we had to park and hike about a mile. I’ll have to go back with a four wheeler for the first one. But besides that I would have to say the first day was a complete success.

Dickens Cemetery - Peachtree, WV - N37 48.234, W081 27.792

Martins Creek Cemetery - Peachtree, WV - N37 48.794, W081 28.846 (I don’t know the official name for this cemetery, asking area residents yielded no results.)

Saturday was a totally different day headed in a different direction. About a year ago I bought a Garmin GPS for the purpose of Geocaching. As much as I love to be in the outdoors I thought this particular sport would be right up my alley. It took a year to finally put the GPS to use with its original intended purpose. Yesterday, Dennie and I found two caches hidden in the Lake Stephens area.

When we started out I only had one cache programmed into the GPS. We were led on about a two mile hike around the backside of the lake directly to the first cache. I think it was finding the first one at which point I decided this is a hobby I would very much enjoy.

After we found the first cache we went out and got something to eat while I tried to remember how to program coordinates into the GPS. The cache we had already found, I had programmed from a year earlier. Programming the second showed it being in the vicinity of the first but not quite so far out. Basically we walked right past the second cache in our search for the first. I was a little disappointed we would be hiking the same trail as before but found the second cache actually more difficult to locate. It was hidden very well and we had to rely more on the accuracy of the GPS.

I was standing beside of the second cache and told Dennie it’s right here somewhere. He was about 20 feet away and informed me I was standing beside of the cache which was an ammo box in this instance. Sure enough - we had officially found our second cache.

It turned into a pretty decent couple of days. I took a little over 100 pictures from the hollows in Peachtree and the lake.