On the Road Again

     During the night, my dreams were all about geocaches. Traveling along unknown roads on a big motorcycle. Stopping at a bed and breakfast that was a tailor shop during the day, the dreams had nothing that brought them together except that I was on a trip, to find geocaches. It was almost as if I had this subject on my mind…

    When morning finally arrived, I loaded my car with the usual gear, a camera bag and my GPS. YES, I was going on a search to find geocaches. Frank and I had planned a trip, driving towards the east on rt. 22 going out to Blairsville and then dropping to the south before eventually returned home. We had 22 caches on our list.

    The planet Venus was shining in the east as I got into the car. I located Mars below and to the right with binoculars, but had no luck seeing it by eye, the sky was too bright.  This was a rather late start for one of our trips, we are often on the road an hour or so before sunrise. The sun came over the horizon on the drive to Frank’s house. It would have made a great picture except I was on a narrow road with cars behind me and nowhere to pull over.

    Being the second week of February, the days tend to be rather grey here in the Pittsburgh area. Bucking the average, this morning’s sky was blue and the sun was bright. Things looked promising.

    Our first find was alongside a pull off, hidden near a sign saying “No Hunting”. That was just the opposite of what we had planned. Hunting was exactly what we were going to do today! We got into a rhythm; we’d drive a short distance and then pull over to snag another find. Sometimes we had to circle back on the opposite side of the divided highway to locate one, then turn around again to continue our search. 

The further away from Pittsburgh we went, the nicer the scenery was!

    Coming into the town of New Alexandria, we had a couple caches which involved a bridge which no longer exists. We drove down a rutted and ice covered road, passing some “Road Closed” signs sitting on the berm. It was obvious that the area here had been recently flooded. Thick pieces of ice lay cracked in the swampy area beside the road. Broken ice had been pushed to the sides by plows. The salt had only partially cleared the road.

    Driving under a large concrete arched structure, we came to where the bridge once crossed the Loyalhanna Creek. The cache was easy to find but we stayed for awhile to take pictures. Later research showed that the bridge that once crossed here used to be rt.22 before the road was modernized and widened. 

In the 1830’s the bridge was a covered toll bridge.

Builders working on the RR bridge. The covered bridge can be seen behind it.

    The concrete structure was part of a railroad bridge that the Pennsylvania Railroad crossed. The line is now gone but parts of it remain. There are some foundations in the near-by woods from a station that was located here. (Those will be for another trip!)

    We continued on our journey, eventually coming into Blairsville. Going south on 217, we did a short detour to visit the area around Torrance State Hospital. Ann Marie and I had found a nice, abandoned building here and I wanted to show it to Frank. When we arrived, it was gone, the land leveled with no signs that there had ever been a building here.

    Driving through the town of Derry we found another old building to explore, the Ralph Smith and Sons Building. Crossing a bridge, we saw the building below us. Turning around we navigated the back streets to get to it. It appears to be an old RR building; the structure is similar to many of the buildings often situated near railroads. The doors were locked with NO TRESPASSING signs posted on them. We spent awhile taking pictures, of course, staying outside! It was obvious that no one had been here recently, except kids. Most of the windows were broken and graffiti was sprayed on the insides.

  

    The time spent there was worthwhile. We got some nice pictures and some much-needed stretching. It felt good to walk around for a bit! Back on the road again, after a couple more caches, we turned right on rt.30 and headed back in the direction we had come from. 

The intrepid explorers @ their final cache!

    We did one last cache in the parking lot of a Speedway Service Station. It was our 22^nd cache of the day, a record for both of us! To celebrate we stopped inside and got a couple Slim Jims for the ride home.

    We had a great drive; we got lots of pictures and found every one of the caches we planned! This rarely happens. There was one hidden against a telephone pole but luckily, the snow had melted enough that we were able to locate it. If the snow was still there, it would’ve been a DNF. (Did Not Find) The weather was great, our hands were a bit cold at first but as we were heading home, the windows were opened to allow the fresh air into the car.

    Another great adventure, you never know what you might find, so keep on looking!

It’s what keeps us caching!