The TWOs

     This is it, the morning of the 22^nd. 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 14^th, 2015, watching the clock turn to 9:26:53am.  (π= 3.141592653 or May 14^th, 2015@9:26:53)

I even baked a pie for the occasion

    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 22^nd, 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!

2:22:22am on 2/22/2022

    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.

Sunrise?

    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!

Frank at the Sanitarium Cache

    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!

Me at the coke oven, #2000!

    This was my TWO thousandth find!  I had found my 1000^th 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 1000^th 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

    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.

Almost home

    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…

22:22:22 on 2/22/2022

Another Day of Looking for Things in the Woods

         Frank and I took another drive this morning to search for more of those things hidden in the woods… geocaches. We left shortly after sunrise with Frank taking on the driving obligations.

        We hadn’t planned a long day, just a few caches with-in 10-15 miles of my house. The majority of them were hidden in North Park. This is the largest park in Alleghany County’s park system. There are over 3000 acres in the park along with a large lake. The park was built in the early 30’s with help from the C.C.C.

        Our first stop should have been a rather easy find. It was a “guardrail cache”. It was hidden on, in or around a guardrail. We searched from one end to the other without seeing it. We looked in the near-by trees and under rocks. Eventually, Frank found it right where we originally looked. Why we didn’t see it, I don’t know. Let’s just say it was early and we weren’t quite into the game yet… Yeah, that will work!

        Our next find was what is called a Multi-Cache. You are given clues and with them you have to figure out where the final cache is hidden. We had both figured out where it was. It was another guard rail cache, hidden in the end of the rails. An easy find, once we had figured out the location.

        In the park, we had to walk up an old dirt road to get to the next cache. Watching our GPS’s as we neared the site, the arrows pointed to the left so we headed into the weeds. The grass wasn’t too high but our pant bottoms got soaked from the dew.

        Our GPS’s showed different spots so I went in one direction and Frank went in another. I searched the “usual” spots without any luck then I heard Frank yell. He had found it, further up the hill. Once I joined him I found it easily. It was hidden under the roots of a large tree. (One of the “usual” spots!) We signed the log and returned it to its hiding spot, a little bit better hidden than when we found it.

        Our next “find” took us for another jaunt into the woods. The beginning was a nice wide path which took us through a nice fairly level section of the park. While we walked we kept an eye on our GPS’s, watching as the distance lowered. Once we were within 30 or 40 feet our geosenses kicked in.

        Geosense is when your experience at finding caches helps you in locating other hides. You compare the site you’re at, to all those other sites you’ve been to and start going over the possibilities. Usually, this works pretty well! You notice small paths in the weeds, you start looking at all the different spots where a cache could be hidden, such as under logs, rocks, trees or guardrails. The Geocaching.com site also tells you how big the cache is and how difficult it is to be found, along with what the terrain is like. This gives you an idea of what you’re looking for also. There is sometimes a hint included with the description, these can be REAL important!

        This find was in what is called a bison tube. It is a small cylindrical container, just large enough to hold a rolled up piece of paper for a log. It was hung on the trunk of a large pine tree.

        The next find was about a ½ mile away, over the top of a large hill and down the other side. Being the wimps we are, we opted for taking the truck rather than walking. It was a good decision!

        We found a trail that was about a ¼ mile away and started down the hillside. Nearing ground zero, (GZ) we started looking around. This one was easy, as long as you were standing in the right spot. It was out in the open, behind a log. We signed, re-hid and then climbed back up the hill.

        The final cache of the day was another Multi-cache. We went to the location specified and had to locate a plaque with some numbers on it. The numbers were used to figure out where we had to go to find the final hide.  After a little basic arithmetic, we quickly figured out that the cache was a ¼ mile away. We grabbed our hiking staffs, our cameras and holding our GPS’s, started down the trail.

        I have been on this trail many times and I’ve always considered it to be one of my favorite spots to hike in North Park. It descends into a valley and follows a stream. It is a nice quiet trail with a few tough sections and you rarely see anyone on it. The sounds of the stream makes a nice background for your hike.

        We passed through the ruins of an old park shelter and then crossed the stream. We passed cliffs where Native Americans used to camp. We saw lots of fallen trees, evidence of the storms we have recently experienced. We passed above a stone wall that was probably built by the C.C.C. when they were working on the park in the 30’s, along with a few old dirt roads which were no longer passable.

        At the bottom of a steep hill we came to GZ, it was somewhere between the stream and a steep cliff. We started searching. Frank made the find, hidden in the cliffside.

        We signed the log, I dropped off a TB and then re-hid the cache and started back up the trail to the truck. Nearing the top of the hill, the truck mere feet away, I realized that I had left my GPS at the cache site. Frank waited as I hoofed it down and back again. Twenty minutes, not bad. I was drenched with sweat. The cache was a bit tougher than it should have been, due to my own forgetfulness!

        We were back at my house before 11, not bad for one of our expeditions!  It was a good morning; we found all of the caches we set out to find and had a good time doing them. The morning was exceptionally nice, a perfect day for geocaching and hanging out with a friend. We also managed to get some exercise in the process. We’ll probably both be taking some Tylenol tonight, but you know... it was worth it!