September 2011

September 12, 2011

Turkey buzzard at Truman Dam

Ed Elmore cabin.

Hardy entering cabin

Tightwad, Missouri

Henry Co Courthouse

Sleepy Hollow

Today we took a long trip through several counties to collect some more caches.  We are trying to find a cache in every county in Missouri so this little venture took us over to the western side of the state and we found five caches in four counties. The great thing about geocaching is we go to places we would probably never see.  This trip took us to Truman Dam and I captured a turkey buzzard in flight over the dam.  At times they would fly below me as I was standing at the Visitor's Center. We checked out a replica of the Ed Elmore Cabin which is located at the dam near the visitor's center. We traveled through a community called Tightwad.  Missouri has some very unique town names.  We then stopped in Henry County which has one of the prettier courthouses and some colorful history.  Daniel Boone's oldest son Daniel was a commissioner and he helped select the sight for the courthouse. Our adventure took us on to our last stopping spot which was out in the middle of nowhere and the cache called Sleepy Hollow.  Interesting enough, the owner of the cache stopped and talked to Hardy and found out he had taught at the university.  Two of her sons and her son-in-law went to UMR and the son-in-law is an electrical engineer and Hardy remembered his name. Small world.  As we started home we stopped in Laurie to have dinner at our favorite Laurie restaurant called Chances Are, and then went to a square dance. A great day geocaching and dancing.

August  30, 2011

After a slow start this morning we decided to go out to our geocache and do some maintenance.  We found that a little critter had gotten into the cache and we had a few teeth marks on the log inside so we replaced that with another updated log.  The conservation department has recently built a road through the area so we can now walk from one side of the area to the other side.  They told us this is about a one mile walk to the other side so that is something we will do in the near future.  This area is very pretty with a few food plots and some ponds and now a road from one side to the other.

August 28, 2011
Today we went to breakfast at Zeno's Restaurant. This is a standard Sunday morning feat for us, not only here in Rolla but also in the "Valley".  We decided to take a ride down to Shannon and Oregon County and look for some geocache's.  The first stop was at a cemetery but we were unable to find that cache.  The second stop was outside Winona at the Conservation Center.  This center is comparatively new and very nice with hiking trails,  old school, an old log house and several pieces of old equipment.  This is a very interesting area and the Conservation Department has put a lot of time and effort into this. They had some severe wind damage several weeks ago so there were a lot of downed trees and they were still in the process of getting that mess cleaned.   We also found the cache.  The next stop was at McCormack Lake, south of Winona.  We had been to this area before and it is a very pretty CCC built lake and conservation area.  We also found the cache so two out of three isn't bad. We stopped outside Cabool for dinner and saw a nice light show in the sky.  There were some streaks of lightening but mostly cloud to cloud.  We even had some rain.