Caching along Lake Erie

Last week we drove about 120 miles up to Lake Erie to the Thousand Trails RV Park, Kenisee Lake, in Jefferson, OH.  We are not TT members, but this park is also a PassPort America park which means we park for 50% off the regular price.  We paid $20 a night for a 50 amp full hookup.  We stayed 5 days.  What did we do over 5 days?  Mostly we explored this beautiful area and cached. 

When we planned our route into the RV park it mentioned, DO NOT FOLLOW YOUR GPS TO THE PARK.  We didn’t but soon found out why when we drove the route in the Jeep. Notice the height limit on the side of the overpass, 9’1”. Our rig is 12’3”; now that would have ruined our day!

We later learned that this overpass was once part of the Northern Pennsylvania RR, but now is part of the beautiful Rails to Trails system.  We found this out by Geocaching, of course.

While Geocaching we also discovered the Ashtabula Fairgrounds and the cute Floriculture building there. We were over a week away from the opening of that fair and did not want to spend that much time hanging around, but we will be back! We just love this part of the country.

Some of the other interesting things we discovered while Geocaching:

Ashtabula was part of the Underground Railroad.

Many of these homes had fake floor sections that lead to tunnels for escaping the authorities and for hiding slaves while waiting to move them to the next safe house.

We found a cache right on the trail where we learned all about this amazing part of our Civil War (and also our Quaker) history.

We load all the caches in the area where we are parked into our TomTom GPS so as we are driving our TomTom will announce, “Cache Near”.  We drove by this local landmark several times on our way back to the RV while TomTom told us that there was a “Cache Near” before we said, OK!, we’re stopping.  We just couldn’t figure out how to get someone to take our picture or how to climb up to the seat.

We checked our GPS and decided to drive closer to Lake Erie to the town of Geneva.  This is an interesting project called groins, those cement wedges, that have been installed to keep the lakeshore stable during the very severe weather that this part of the country experiences.  Although we love this area, we DO NOT plan to be here in the winter to observe this first hand.

We were driving through Geneva when we spotted about 4 people snooping around a clock in the intersection. We said they have got to be cachers and we made a quick turnaround.  We parked right by the clock and said, “Cachers?”  Yes, they said, and that began the most amazing half hour sharing stories about RV’ing, a copy of Nick Russell’s Newspaper, one of our Pathtags, and also finding with a Newbee Cacher our 700th and her 2nd cache. 

While caching in Geneva we saw this pass us by and later saw where they were setting up the program, a Biker Rally in Geneva by the Lake.  Since I didn’t think I’d qualify, we didn’t stop.

We did drive through Geneva by the Lake and thought it looked a lot like Pismo Beach, same attractions, same groups of people, same resort ambiance; it did make us homesick for the Annual Westerfield Reunion in Pismo being held this weekend.  We’ll miss you guys.

 

Until our next blog we will be working on our next 100 caches On the Road Again, Barbara, Tom &  Pansy