GOD SAYS "GOODNIGHT"

I was blessed with this sunset while leaving a recent Thursday evening service at Bellville's Storyside Church where I serve duty on the safety team. 

I discovered this church as a guest of my son Brian and wife Kate a year ago this month.  It is the most meaningful and vibrant place of worship I have ever experienced.  Except for wintering in Florida I have not missed a Sunday service since I started.

Some folks may find that remarkable given I had not had any connection with a bricks and mortar church in the past 60 years.

I am comforted to now learn God's grace may find my behavior excusable.

Thank you God!

GEOCACHE POTPOURRI--

We stumbled across this "Gregg Mill Bridge-1881" while meandering home via back roads from a geocache outing in Frazeysburg recently.

While we were exploring inside the bridge a couple of ladies stopped by and shared some of the bridge's history as they had been raised nearby.

A day or so later I was reviewing that day's geocaching activity and discovered there was a cache on this bridge.  We were unaware of that because we did not have cell phone coverage during our impromptu visit.

Armed with that knowledge and finding several other caches nearby we went back for another visit.

That's Sue in the second picture enjoying a beautiful view of the underlying stream.  The bridge is located in the northeast corner of Licking County, and, for the really curious it is shown on page 60 of the Ohio Atlas & Gazetteer.

Several Days Later...

we were geocaching at Malabar Farm with son Craig and doing some exploratory work on a challenging multi-cache located there.

I had studied the cache description and it sounded like the final container of that multi might have been located in a "cave" I had explored on a ranger-guided tour there 10 years earlier.

That's Sue (a 70+ year young, great-grandmother) leading me out of the cave's entrance while son Craig spelunked his way through the cave, exploring the exit I had remembered from all those years ago.

Your's truly is a 76+ year old, great-grandfather and, at the moment of this composition, is really wondering about the sanity of folks our age fiddling with these kinds of challenges.

Stay tuned!

Meanwhile, later that same day we were enjoying Knox County's Honey Run Park in search of yet another geocache.  That's son Craig (below) taking a peek at a very interesting ridge formation there.

This was our third visit to this park in search of this cache and, in spite of the cache owner's correction of the latitude/longitude by 200 feet or so, we remain unsuccessful.  Craig and Sue (below) are having fun with our disappointment while they flank an old inscription in the rock near where we should have found the cache.

To close on a more positive note here's a photo of Sue taken on a recent visit to this same park which features Knox County's only waterfall:

GOBBLE, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble

Picture this:

I was sitting on my upper deck and sighting in my new .223/5.56 Ruger Mini-14 Ranch rifle.

For those of you not familiar with this caliber, it is very noisy and at that point I had fired about 15 rounds.

While I was evaluating my latest five rounds I noticed movement under my hanging bird feeder (about 30 feet away) and there were momma wild turkey and four chicks snacking on seed messy songbirds drop from their untidy munching habits.

I was astonished momma turkey would be in my woodsy neighborhood, let alone being that close to me and my noisy gun.

This thing is so loud I put on my hearing protection before I get it out of the gun safe.

Well, maybe not quite that loud.

Meanwhile, I sat there in plain sight of momma who kept an eye on me while she and her chicks enjoyed lunch.  Probably 10 or 15 minues worth before they wandered leisurely back across my driveway and down over the dam.

Thank you God for yet another of your visual, natural treasures.

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Did you notice the somewhat odd headline?  ...my typographical representation of momma and her 4 chicks.  😊