Great Parks of Hamilton County Geotour

The Clinton County Barn Quilt geotrail only took 5.5 hours so we decided to head over to the Great Parks of Hamilton County Geotour(s) on Sunday. With both a kids/beginners version and an intermediate version, these had a greater variety of locations including waterfalls, grasslands, gardens and hilly hikes. 

But, first... a final cache in Wilmington. Fun!

CD Music Exchange GC2WCTY

The first tour is for all cachers and spread several miles across Hamilton County. To complete the tour, you have to find 10 of 15 caches. We started with a new friend at Sharon Woods. I think TaGeez had a handle on this "guardian of the cache".

Ancient History GC7NRAM

Next stop along the river in Sharon Woods is the other tour for children and beginners. So, of course, we had to do it. Some of these hides were even harder :)  But they were just as beautiful as we followed the winding path along several progressively impressive waterfalls.

Don't Miss at Sharon Woods GCA691

GPGT Kids Trail - 03 Gorge Trail Waterfall GC7NRA2

With an eye on completing this tour in a timely manner, we were slowed by the beautiful scenery along Glenwood Gardens. This beautifully landscaped park includes a 1.0-mile paved trail and the 1.6-mile Wetland Loop nature trail and formal gardens, prairies, forests and wetlands. 

Exploring the Discovery Garden GC7NRA9

Doing a little more research after the visit, we really under explored this lovely place. It's worth a trip back to visit the 12-acre Highfield Discovery Garden inside Glenwood.

• Frog & Toads Garden - Look closely between those lily pads and you’ll see they are surrounded by frogs.
• Wizard’s Garden - Pass the purple hat, don’t wake the dragon and take the bouncy bridge to the fairy garden.
• Trolley Garden - Four small scale trains run on tracks surrounding some of your favorite storybook characters.
• Vegetable Garden - Raised beds will put you eye level with common and not-so-common vegetables.
• Grandma’s Scent Garden - You’ll be surrounded by smelly plants for your pretend tea party in this garden.
• Morph Garden - The caterpillars in this garden are huge!
• Butterfly Garden - This garden is shaped like its favorite resident.

Glenwood Garden Trails GC7NRAA

We spent the next several hours driving the outskirts of Cincinnati visiting parks and grabbing caches. These were rather unique as all the containers were identical and OUT IN THE OPEN! Literally. Chained to signs and park benches. Which means that several were missing (like the one below). As we were nearing the end of our list I was worried we wouldn't make the 10 we needed for the more advance tour.

Catch and Release GC7NRB0

Nine caches down, and we reached the southwest corner of the county. That left the famous Shawnee Lookout cache, one of (or "the") oldest cache in Ohio.  It really did look like a short walk from the parking lot.

It probably would have been if the walk was as the crow flies. Instead it was a climb, climb, climb (and the accidental detour didn't help - LOL). Luckily along the way, ShelleyJean excelled at solving several multis to pass the time.

Although a little humid (and brisk), it was a lovely walk to this oldie. I'm glad we didn't hike it during GeoWoodstock - we enjoyed the peace, the views, the joy of discovery.

Shawnee Lookout Cache GC31A -- Feb 2001!

Sticky and satisfied, we returned to the car and decided to turn for home. As we had to pass Dayton, we decided to make a second attempt at a Virtual downtown. We missed it Saturday by minutes - a series of fountains that run a few minutes before and a few minutes after the hour.  According to the Nuvi, we risked missing it again, but ShelleyJean did her best Nascar impression on the freeway. We made it minutes to spare!

Peace and Light - Five Rivers Metropark GC7B92C

We ran to the water's edge, pulled out our cameras for the required selfie and COLD! Hey, the water spray moves! And it was so cold and felt so very, very good!

We, of course, stood waiting by the rail hoping it would happen again. Fave point!

Refreshed, successful, relaxed, we decided to detour for Calvary Cemetery - the home of a series of geocaches amongst the city's founding fathers.

Calvary Cemetery GC3KQGA

And so ends another lovely weekend with the two best geocaching compatriots I could ask for!

GPHC Geocoins

As we started the tour, we called the Sharon Centre gift shop to make sure they still had geocoins for each tour. They directed us to customer service who gave us a name and address to mail our check for the cost of the coins plus shipping. We were warned that the coins are on backorder so there's no guarantee we will receive them. I appreciate the popularity of the tour during GeoWoodstock could've caught them by surprise but, as an official geocaching.com geotour, you would think they would reorder, wouldn't you? Fingers crossed.  Either way, it was a lovely tour.