Since we are heading to Washington DC for a week, we decided to break the trip up some more with a stop in Martinsburg WV. This will be our third time camping in the area at our third campground. What is in Martinsburg that keeps us coming back? Gadget Caches. More on that later.
With the drive from Bob Evans to Martinsburg being about 340 miles, we decided to try to divide it in half and do a Walmart stop in Fairmont WV along I-79. The traffic along the main drag was very busy, but once there, we found it to be fairly quiet and level. One whole side of the parking lot has a hundred foot tall cliff which completely eliminated noise from that direction and made for an even earlier sunset.
We found Mi Pueblo to be a great little Mexican restaurant within easy walking distance. And after that we headed the few hundred feet from our rig to the Tygart Valley Theater to see Sully. Lucky for us, Tuesday night is discount night and we got in for $4.50 a piece. The theater itself is just a little run down, but not too bad. We enjoyed the movie and since the only "competition" was the vice presidential debate, we knew we made the right choice. We cannot recall the last time we did dinner and a movie.
The rest of the drive along I-79, I-68 I-70 and I-81 was pretty but the mountains of eastern West Virginia and western Maryland were a lot like a roller coaster. I was very glad we had the Dutch Star with its engine brake rather than our old gas rig. Who knows how it's brakes would have fared.
If you every travel this route heading eastbound or westbound, you should plan to stop at the Sideling Hill Rest Stop. It is on I-68 near mile marker 172, about 6 miles west of I-68 / I-70 junction. Trucks are not permitted but there is room for 5 or 6 RVs. There is a pedestrian bridge over the expressway allowing people going either direction access to both sides. The visitor center was closed the day we stopped but there are interpretive signs explaining what you are seeing. The cut through the top of the hill that was made to put in I-68 exposed a very interesting rock pattern. The rock layers form a U shaped feature that was amazing to see. Make sure to click on the images to see the detail of the layers.
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| One Side |
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| The Other Side |
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| Both Sides |
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| Looking Downhill with Visitor's Center on Left |
We pulled into Nahkeeta Campground in Martinsburg WV and got ourselves setup. It is immediately adjacent to Route 9 which turns out to be a very busy road. Fortunately the weather was cold enough in the evenings that we had the windows closed, so the noise was tolerable. As far as we saw, there are no real facilities here, so you need to have a self contained RV to stay here.
There is a very nice bike path right next to Route 9 easily accessed from the campground. We decided to take a ride since it was a nice afternoon plus there are quite a few caches all along the trail.
With the weather forecast, we planned on only having 2 days of good weather to attempt the 15 newer gadget caches. So you ask "what is a gadget cache?" Generally they are caches that are very easy to find but require some amount of effort to open them up to get to the log. A cacher that lives in Martinsburg that has become quite a celebrity in the geocaching world because of his very unique and creative hides is WVTim.
His new series is touted as smart caches, meaning they have a small microprocessor, a user interface and make you do something in order to get the code needed to unlock the container and get to the log book. Without giving away the exact solutions, here are a couple examples of ones he has made.
SCBC 2 Altitude Cache - After a long drive up to Sleepy Creek Wildlife Area, you then hike about a mile up hill to an old fire tower. Hidden in the rocks not far from the tower is a large ammo can that contains a little box maybe a bout 4" by 6" by 3" with a little display and a battery holder. After placing the batteries into the holder, the thing boots up and displays several screen before it tells you what you need to do. In this case, it displays your altitude and that you need to change the altitude of the box by 50' either up or down within a 12 minute time limit. The most obvious choice is to climb the tower, but another option is to head back down the trail until you have descended 50'. I picked the climb since I wanted to see the view. Tim was nice enough to supply a neck strap so you can use both hands for the climb. I'm not sure how long it took me to get to the top, but once there, the display now showed I had completed my task and provided the 4 character code to unlock the other half of the ammo can and sign the log.
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| Debris at Bottom is Not Reassuring |
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| It Looks a Long Ways Up |
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| Ready for the Climb |
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| View from Up High |
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| Looking Down at Chris, Way Down There |
Another example is SCBC 6 Virtual Flight which is located at an orchard and farm market. This one looks like a bird house as you approach but upon opening up the front cover, you are confronted with another display, battery holder, and LED and a card slot. In another smaller compartment are about a dozon cards the size of credit cards but identified as boarding passes. In order to get the code to open the lock, you must select the correct 4 boarding passes in the proper sequence in order to make all the connections on your flight from Martinsburg to Germany. Each time you put in a wrong card, it starts all over again. My very first card had a 1 in 12 chance and I happened to get it right on the first try! My luck was short lived, I lost count how many failed attempts I had as I worked through the cards but eventually found the correct 4 cards in order.
We even had the privilege of meeting WVTim in person. One of these new caches is on a vacant 7 acre lot a few houses from where he lives. We pulled into the parking spot on the grass knowing we were in the right place since there was a "geocacher parking" sign hanging on the tree. We had brought a picnic lunch with us and had decided to sit in the car and enjoy it before trying the cache located here.
As we were just finishing up eating, a guy on a golf cart pulls in next to us. Tim was out to do some chores but saw a car parked and decided to stop by. We talked with him for quite some time and in pulls a second car with two couples. The conversation continued even longer before we decided to join one of the other couples that had not attempted this cache. The four of us were led to several spots on the property by a box Tim built that included GPS capabilities. At each location we needed to collect info in order to open the cache and sign the log. It's always fun running into other cachers and was even better to meet WVTim.
By completing the 15 caches in this series we were able to pick up the special coin that was created for cachers.
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| Front/Back of Commemorative Geocoin |
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