Geocaching in Ohio

Last week it was my birthday and Louie asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate.  I was itching to add a new state to my list of states we've geocached in, so we decided to do a road trip to Ohio.  And lucky for us we were able to visit some cool locations while we were there.

One of my favorite caches of the day was the one at an old school that was built in 1901.  Old buildings like this really give us a unique look at how life used to be.  The cache was School Days at Hay Jay. 

 Unfortunately it's only open one day per month for viewing, so we had to settle for peering in the windows and snapping pictures.  I would have loved to have gotten inside and walked around.

Out behind the school were 2 outhouses, one for the boys and one for the girls.  Underneath one of them we found a nice large ammo can geocache....

I thought this geocache was nicely hidden, it was a large size and brought us to a cool historic location, so I gave this geocache a favorite point.  Favorite points are awarded to caches that are special or unique in some way and it's also a good way to let other geocachers know that it's worth their time to go hunt for a specific geocache.

Next we visited Hopewell Indian Mounds and found a geocache there as well called The Mounds.

Snacking and meals figure prominently on our geocaching travels and here we are taking a much needed cookie break....

This was a nice cache hidden in a small pocket of woods....

I really enjoy the old cemetery caches and I like the small out-of-the-way cemeteries, especially when they have old graves in them.   It must be because I love history so much and there is so much that can be learned by wandering through the old cemeteries.

 I love looking at the old headstones and reading the inscriptions.  The really old graves have the longest and best inscriptions.

But the graves I really like to see the most are the ones belonging to our military veterans.  Often they are accompanied by a marker stating which war they served in.

How stunning and patriotic is it to see a grave marker for a Civil War veteran with a new flag flying  proudly next to it?  You cannot stand there and look at something like that and not appreciate the sacrifice this man gave for his country.  Sometimes I will lean over and touch the headstone, almost as if it will give me a small link back in time.   It's a very emotional moment.  This is truly a beautiful grave....

 

The next headstone is one of my all time favorites so far because it's one of the oldest ones I've come across.

Look at that - War of 1812!  Wow!!  William McLain, if you could talk, what stories would you tell me?  I promise you that I could sit there for hours and listen.

In all, we ending up grabbing 20 geoaches that day, and visited Indiana, Ohio and Michigan.  It was an epic day and as far as I'm concerned, the perfect way to spend my special day.  When we got home, my son and his girlfriend were waiting with a huge birthday cake.

They admitted that they had no idea how old I was, so they just wrote what they thought was my correct age.  LOL!  I'm glad that they erred on the side of caution and I'm not telling you how old I really am, but let's just say that I was very pleased with what they guessed.  That might have been the best birthday present of all!!