A Short Stroll on the Trail

 The morning was beautiful, the sky was blue, the moon could be seen in-between the trees in my front yard, and the temperatures were in the low 70’s. It was a perfect day for a walk on the Rachel Carson Trail!

    Ann Marie and I have hiked this trail many times, we completed the entire trail back in April of 2013.  Even further back, a hike on the trail was one of our first outings together! There are lots of sections which are great for short walks.

    This trail was named The Rachel Carson Trail since it passes near where the famous writer and environmentalist used to live. Back in 1975 the trail was 33 miles long, today it is 46.1 miles long, stretching from North Park to Harrison Hills County Park near the town of Freeport. Like so many trails in the country, it is a work in progress. Due to road work, new homes and safety concerns, the trail often changes its route.

    I have 3 different trail guides, one from 1975, one from 1997 and one from 2004. I guess (?) I should get the newest guide to complete my collection. A guide really isn’t needed; the trail is very well marked!

    The section I was walking this morning was changed a few years ago to eliminate some of the road walking and to take the trail back into the greenery.  Ann Marie and I hadn’t been on this section, so I thought it would be a great place to take a stroll.

    I had just finished reading “A Walk in the Park”, by Kevin Fedarko. This book tells about his “walk” through the Grand Canyon, an idea that turned out to be much harder than he originally thought. After reading books about long hikes and extreme camping, they just make me want to go out into the wilderness. Now, the RCT may not be wilderness, but it is out in the woods.

    The section I was going on was all of about a mile and a half. That would be a good distance for me to haul my lazy butt without killing me. After all, it is just a short walk…

  

    The trail from where I started took me up a slight slope to the edge of a hill overlooking the turnpike and rt.910. The highways soon disappeared but the noise from them stayed with me almost the entire walk. I came across a farmer’s field with wild grass growing beside it. The sunlight was illuminating the buds at the ends of the stalks. I got a bit wet from the dew as walked through them. I was hoping they weren’t hiding any ticks.

    I came across an old cement structure; I believe it is an old sedimentation tank from back in the days when a Nike site was located near-by. Some cement steps led up to nothing, whatever was there is now long gone. Just the tank and some other cement structures, all the rest has disappeared.

    A bit further on, the trail drifted away from the edge of the hillside and the noise of the traffic lessened. It was nice walking along the level, twisting path. Then I came to the downhill section.

    The RCT is known for not taking an easy way whenever a straight line will work. The path led right down a rather steep hill, the trail was basically a sloped wall of rocks. I went down carefully, not wanting to slip. It wasn’t as bad as I imagined and I was down alongside a stream before I knew it.

    The air was a bit cooler near the stream. There were lots of wildflowers growing in batches on either side of the trail. A few mud holes were intermingled with the dirt path but nothing to cause any problems, the tracks of deer in them showed that they had recently been on the trail also. I crossed a dried up section of the stream and soon was at the road and the end of this brief walk. I only saw one person while I was on the trail, a runner who made me feel old as he sped past me. I remember the days when I used to do that…for now though, I’m happy to just take my time and enjoy the flowers, the birds and the fresh air!

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!