Thursday, March 8, 2012

In Search of The Ghost Train

I grew up in this town and have always been so incredibly intrigued by its history thanks to a third grade teacher who made every kid in the district passionate about it. Thanks Mrs. Egan. Then there was my friend's mom, Doris, who is now the town historian, who I adored, that made that history come alive. Despite being a relative outsider (my kids have more legacy in this town than I do) I am in love with this place.

A few days ago, Kenny and I were hiking and while I stopped to take a photo of an old foundation I found this cache. At first I was sure it was going to be something hunting related, only to find out that it was a geo-cache. The rest was history. I have spent more time than I should this past week, thinking about it, plotting strategy and waypoints…uh hello, reality is calling…you would have thought I was planning that expedition to the top of the world, which I had told myself at 10 that I would do when I was  55. Well, I have 8 years to go and honestly no real desire to die climbing. I can't bare to be above 9K feet for too long without a massive headache I can't imagine 29k. (oops, sorry got a bit sidetracked- that was a whole other story).

So today, it was beautiful. My meetings were over by 3. My work was done by 4. I drove home, music blasting out the sunroof and got the urge to go treasure hunting. I decided to go on the quest for the ghost train. It was late when Roseanne and I started down this abandoned railroad bed. Leave it to me to decide to follow way-points in the woods during a solar storm. We walked past the first cache while I was trying to get the coordinates correct, oh yea, another stupid point, I was in a rush so i figured I could enter them on the fly. This did not work out so well. I spent stupid time trying to get it correct. we walked almost  mile past the first waypoint because I had a typo. Remember the Little Rascals episode, the First Round Up, when the kids went camping? When we figured it out we were so deep into the woods, had lost track of time,  and it was already 6:10. we were loosing light fast. We decided to turn around and head back in the interest of making it out of the woods before it was too dark. Put it this way, I was glad I had a hoodie on as there was this BAT who decided to make us feel like we were trespassing. Then there was the train whistle in the background right as i saw the fox run across our path. On the way home I decided that i was disappointed that i missed that cache, looking at the map I know I must have looked in the tree its in. Now I am determined to complete this one. Until tomorrow?