The route this day took us from Arlington, VA to Columbus West, OH. We had a minor detour planned, to find some WVTim caches.

Approximate time on road/out caching: 17 hours
Total miles driven: 473 mi / 761 km
Total cahes found: 35
Total DNF: 3
States visited: Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio
Famous places visited: Berkeley County (famous for geocachers at least)
Most memorable cache: GC6CGHA SCBC 13 ABC’s of caching (because of how annoyed we were when we couldn’t get it open)
Biggest surprise: How much time some of the caches took
Weather: Sunny, partly clouded, rain
Highest temperature: We forgot to write it down
Lowest temperature: We forgot to write it down
Roadwork: Yes

Time to hit the road

After spending a day on our feet, it was time to get back into the car. Our feet was still hurting after the long day in D.C., so it was nice to be able to drive a bit today. We had a long plan ahead of us, so we needed to get going early. But we also needed some rest, so we didn’t leave the hotel until about 7am (which was one hour later than planned).

We didn’t have too many caches planned for the first part, since we had so many planned in West Virginia. So we had a relatively «slow start» and covered some miles rater quickly.

Finding some famous caches

We wanted to find some WVTim caches, mainly because they are famous. It is always fun finding caches you’ve heard a lot about.

The first one was at a rest area, and was kinda funny. We also DNF-ed a cache and found an earthcache at the same rest area. And before leaving, we attempted another WVTim cache (yes, this rest area had four caches in total).

Not exactly how we had planned this

Finding the second WVTim cache didn’t exactly go how we had planned. It was a lot harder than we had anticipated, and we ended up spending quite a lot of time. And when a day starts like this, it usually affects the entire rest of the day. We did give up, but couldn’t get ourselves to leave without checking YouTube once more. And when we found another hint, we had to give it another try. The second try was a lot more successful, and this was a nice cache after all. It just wasn’t the right cache for us today.

It got better

But not all of the famous caches were difficult. Some were just plain fun, like we had hoped. Most of the ones we found were the type we enjoy, like the one below. We don’t mind having to work, it’s part where we don’t understand anything that we don’t always enjoy that much 😉

I guess we like funny caches better than caches we have to struggle with. But each to their own, it’s a good thing that we have both types in this game 🙂

Then worse…

The worst experience today was probably when we tried to find GC3QQGD Take a Deep Breath. We knew exactly how to solve it, and we’ve even found one like it in Norway. We brought our own supplies, but now matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get it to work. There’s something strange about not finding a cache you can see and touch… And it’s also very annoying.

But eventually, we just had to give up, and realize that you can’t find them all. No matter how prepared you are.

But since we spent so much time on a few of the caches, we had to realize that we couldn’t find all we had on our plan. So sadly we had to skip some of them. And for some reason, we managed to skip the one we wanted to find… We bought jumper cables (very normal for tourist, yes?) just to do this cache. And then we didn’t do it… Well, well. (That was all our fault, of course)

It wasn’t all bad of course, we still enjoyed our visit, and we did loose some favorite points 😉

Back to the Interstate

We still had a lot of road to cover, so it was time to get back to the interstate. The rest of the plan was either special caches (cache types) or caches we needed for counties.

We stopped at a rest area that had both a virtual, a traditional and two earthcaches. We ended up finding half. And we also met other cachers there, which is always fun!

We also managed to almost run out of gas, at least it felt that way…

Another detour

After driving for a long time, with only a few stops, we did another detour. Not a big one, but still a detour. We needed to find GC53H2N WVCACHERS3: 10 Caches – 6000 Fav Points Challenge, both to get a find in the county and for Heltinnen to complete another combo in her D/T grid. The road to that cache was a bit like Norwegian roads. Narrow and with lots of potholes.

After a short drive through the corner of Pennsylvania and the northern panhandle of West Virginia  (and a couple cache stops), we were finally in Ohio. But we still had a few miles left.

Caching in the dark

The sun set long before we arrived in Columbus. So we had to drive and cache in the dark for the last miles. Besides from a small detour to the virtual cache GC71EA Letter perfect crossing, we didn’t drive far from the interstate. We only stopped at a couple rest areas and a couple caches right at two exits.

We finally arrived at the hotel, for some much needed rest. This was a long day, a bit longer than planned. But it was still a nice day after all 😀

Pictures