Clinton County Barn Quilt GeoTrail

It's July, and TaGeez, ShelleyJean and I had the need for pavement under the tires. That lovely, long road and the blue skies let us south to Ohio. First a stop in Dayton and then onto the Clinton County Barn Quilt Geotrail.

Spirit Lookout - SH GC7B8MX

First stop is the Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum. If you've read this blog before, you aren't very surprised. Besides being the site of a new Virtual and the highest point in Dayton, it's the final resting place of Dayton's most famous brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright. 

It was a bit of a pilgrimage for TaGeez and myself - over the last few years we've viewed the Wright flier in Dayton, Dearborn and Washington DC, explored their historic flights at Kitty Hawk, and honored them at the Wright Brothers National Memorial atop Kill Devil Hills.

Woodland had some lovely old stones. There's a man in a chair atop a monument, a bee hive monument, a giant rock memorializing Erma Bombeck, and a sadly sweet statue of a boy and his dog  who drowned in a nearby river.

Dayton was lovely, and we found many photo opportunities. 

But then our next stop was a little disturbing. We headed to one of the most favorited (and large) caches in Ohio. It was billed as a memorial to a lost loved one, a geocacher. SPOILER: Mrs. Geocat has passed and her husband parked her car in front of her house, turning it into a trackable motel. He covered it in trackable codes and...

Mrs. geocat's Trackmobile GC5RMA6

... added a Halloween skeleton to the front seat.

We reached Wilmington mid-day, and started the 29 stops along the Quilt Barn trail.

TaGeez, Scrapcat, and ShelleyJean

Each barn was on private property, with an identical container located near the road. It was a weekend of cache containers out in the open for us. But, when caching adjacent to private property, that's OK. Private property caches are awkward.

Nothing suspicious here, folks.

There was a lot of corn and soybeans on this trip.

ShelleyJean found this covered bridge on our route so we stopped for a photo op and another smiley.

Then we made TaGeez walk miles down a lonely country road to find a tree to water. No, just kidding. We offered him a ride. 

This photo is evidence that we infiltrated a county fair. We were wondering why all the pick-ups were lined up along the road. It was county fair weekend, and one of the final caches needed for this series was behind a big, locked fenced. Somehow, ShelleyJean sweet-talked us onto the fairgrounds for free, and we grabbed the cache and a smiley! 

Geotrail completed in one afternoon! It took us 5.5 hours without stopping (because there was no place to stop) to earn our new geocoin. 

Note to future finders. We were able to flash our completed passports at the Hampton Inn & Suite in Wilmington to redeem our coins - they had plenty, and it was a really nice place to stay.