This is it, the morning of the 22nd. A Tuesday morning, a bit early, just a little over TWO hours into the day. It isn’t the time which is important so much as it is, the numbers.
I
have a weird obsession of seeing certain numbers come together. Watching the odometer turn over to 100,000
miles, or on π Day, May 14th, 2015, watching the clock
turn to 9:26:53am. (π= 3.141592653 or May 14th, 2015@9:26:53)
Yes,
this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. Right now I am waiting for the clock
to hit, 2:22:22AM, on TWOsday, February 22nd, 2022.
That’s a whole bunch of twos in
there! How could anyone NOT
get excited about that? I imagine there are alarm clocks going off all over the
eastern part of the country right now! Today is a great day to celebrate the
number TWO!
The
number TWO is a very important
number, it governs most of our lives. We have TWO eyes to see, TWO
ears to listen, TWO arms to hold and
hug and TWO legs to move us around.
The majority of us end up with another, the forces of love drawing us together
into a pair, TWO people.
Later
in the day, Frank and I are heading towards Altoona to do some geocaches and
maybe, see a train or TWO.
Geocaching.com has a souvenir they are awarding any cacher who finds TWO caches today. We are planning on
adding that souvenir to our banks.
The
time has come…gotta take a picture!
A
few hours later, I arrived at Frank’s house, a little before 5. We wanted to be
in the Altoona area by seven, just in case there might be a sunrise. Frank got us there right at our scheduled
time. There wasn’t much of a sunrise though, it was more of a brightening of
the sky.
We
didn’t complain; it wasn’t raining! (Yet) Our first cache was near a railroad
crossing. Sadly, no trains passed by
while we were there. Our second find was hidden close to where a sanitarium used
to be located. The high altitude and fresh air was thought to be helpful for
the patients. It was later turned into a
prison and is now owned by a hydroponic company.
Hmmm, this could be a future exploration site!
TWO caches later we came to one hidden near a line of coke ovens. The trip
down to them was very treacherous because even though the temperatures were in
the 40’s, the dirt road that led to them was covered with a thick coating of
ice! Walking was treacherous, thank heavens for hiking staffs! Snow along the edges
provided some traction but with each step, you would sink in an inch, making
simple walking a step, lift, step type of procedure. It got a bit tiring. The
cache was only a ¼ mile away from where the truck was parked but it took much
longer to get there. Follow the road or climb/fall down cliffs…
I
believe it was Archimedes that said that the shortest distance between TWO points is a straight line, he
obviously never went geocaching!
This was my TWO thousandth find! I had found my 1000th cache about
5 miles away from this one. (Altoona has some good caches.) The find was worth
the slippery hike down to it, the difficulties are part of what make it fun!
To
read about my 1000th cache, click here: Books,
Adventure and Life: Grail of the Alleghenies Legend, My 1000th Cache!
(booksadventuresandlife.blogspot.com)
The
coke ovens are part of a community that once was here called Bennington. There
is a near-by cemetery with the foundation of the church beside it and a few
other remnants hidden in the woods. The
town was built when the RR tunnels in Gallitzen were dug. Originally a shanty town
to house the Irish and other immigrant laborers who hand-dug the tunnels, it could only be reached by train. Coal
miners also occupied the houses of the village. It was abandoned in the late 40's.
After this find, Frank
and I then headed down towards the Horseshoe Curve and found four more caches.
We passed on climbing up to the curve because the rain was starting and
frankly, we didn’t want to get wet, or fall! (Such wimps!)
The
last cache of the day was hidden in some rocks about 20-30 feet above the trail.
We had to get around a large, icy culvert to get to the cache. The path had
lots of ice on it and care was needed to mak sure we didn’t slip. Once we were
at “ground zero” we made a quick find and then returned to the truck where it
was nice and dry. The ride home was uneventful and went quickly.
Fog was rising off the streams as I neared my home. Like all our trips, we had a good time, I believe that this is caused by the TWO people involved! There was only one train we saw in AlTWOna, but we found all the caches we had searched for! There were no unfortunate slips or falls, we stayed fairly dry and, I made my 2000th find! On top of all that, we both received a souvenir! Not bad for a day of Twos!
One
final shot, taken just a few minutes ago…
1 comment:
You really described our adventure well. Always a great a fun time. Love the stream photo
Post a Comment