GEOCACHING--
Scavenger hunting in the high-tech style

We found ourselves in the above cemetery on a dead-end road high in the forested hills of Vinton County, several miles from the nearest paved road and couldn't remember the last power line we had seen.  I still shudder at the image of the last human dwelling we passed.  I think there was a shack in that trash smothered mess on both sides of the narrow road--somewhere.

I remember the hair on my arm standing up as the haunting tune "Dueling Banjos" rattled through my memory.

This adventure started as we were rolling south on SR 93 toward an evening of square dancing in Jackson, OH and began to discuss geocaching.

Nancy Meinzer and husband Mark (above) have been using a geocache application on Nancy's smart phone and shared their growing experience with Sue and me for our first time that day.

With her phone Nancy could simply search for nearby caches and an amazing selection of them would appear for our choice.  After selecting one that sounded promising we were provided the latitude/longitude coordinates of the cache along with the direction of travel and distance to its location.

Our task then was simply to adjust our direction of travel, keeping the distance decreasing.  If the distance began to increase, we were headed away from the object.

Nancy also could find written directions and hints from an on-line site.

This particular cache (above) was nestled in a food storage container which kept its contents dry.  Folks finding the cache are free to take an object they like and/or add a trinket as evidence of their finding it.

Folks also log the date of their visit (right) and can comment on, for example, items they may have taken or left, or where they are from to add to the enjoyment of the next geocacher who finds this "treasure".

There can be some peril in this experience.  The green leaves above the ladies in the lead picture and the yellow leaves behind Mark were poison ivy; the yellow ones evidently reacting to a recent application of herbicide.

The lower photo shows our arrival and departure road which achieved a dead-end at the cemetery; that phrase itself starting another episode of hair standing on the back of one's neck.  Going the opposite direction of this photo, the road immediately dissolved into a steep downgrade of rutted and weed infested clay. 

As an aside, the oldest tombstone we found had a date of death noted as being in the year 1827.  The newest tombstone was current, decorated with an eclectic assortment of tributes, and, was made of wood.  The location was known as the Baird Cemetery and the cache was established in June 2011.  It had attracted 20 folks before us.

We headed back toward civilization hoping we had not annoyed any fiddle-playing Bubba's on our way in.
   

 
The following day we enjoyed finding another cache at the end of a bike trail atop an abandoned RR line in Newark.  This one was well hidden in a camouflaged, circular food container made to appear like part of an abandoned fence post...

...and two more caches at the Velvet Ice Cream Old Mill near Utica.  One was in a large, bulk food container stashed behind some decaying stumps along a nature trail and the second was inside a duck decoy resting atop some antique food processing equipment.

In the latter case, the cache creator had some fun with words because there was a pond full of ducks in the vicinity which could divert searchers who were too casual with the author's creativity.

I have a strong feeling there may be a smart phone or a dedicated geocaching GPS in this writer's future.

Stay tuned.