Caching in Martinsburg

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As I mentioned in the last blog post, there are a series 18 geocaches hidden all over the county around Martinsburg West Virginia that we are hoping to find in order to claim our souvenir geocoin. So far the Hidden Treasures caches we found have been rather simple caches to find - typically in a park or at a business. But two of the caches in this series looked to be a bit more of a hike. This is fine with us, we like hiking and it’s been over a week since we have had the opportunity to get a good hike in. These caches we need are west of camp in the Sleepy Creek Wildlife Management Area at a place called Devils Nose. When we looked at other caches hidden in this area, we realized that we have been hiking here before and had found about 10 geocaches hidden along the Tuscarora Trail. Even with the unusual name, we couldn’t remember the hike to get there but then we saw that we were here 10 years ago so I suppose it was reasonable to have forgotten it.

The hike to Devils Nose starts from within a nice subdivision that isn’t gated but from the signs, appears to be a private resort. The cache page assures people coming to access the trails just beyond the community are permitted and after a bit of a drive we get to a small parking area with a well marked trailhead.

Devil's Nose Trailhead

AllTrails has a route listed as just over 3 miles with 650 feet of elevation gain. It doesn’t look like it will exactly match what trails we will need to hike in order to get to the caches but it covers much of the same route. It was a rather cloudy day but it was still a pleasant hike in the woods. It starts out going downhill along the Maverick Trail before taking a right and continuing downhill along the Tuscarora Trail. Then we cross over a creek and start up the hill on the opposite side.

Nice Trail in the Woods

Fairly Large Creek

Nice to Have a Bridge Across

Creek View from Bridge

At about 1.3 miles into the hike we reach the Devils Nose. There are very large rocks sitting on top of huge exposed rock surface. From the ridge, there are nice views of the valleys on either side of us. It’s always interesting when we get to areas that have unique names because we are always in search of the specific formation that gives the area its name - in this case, where is the Devils Nose?

Approaching the Nose

The Most Prominent Rock at the Nose

Nice View Across Valley

We had one geocache down the narrow ridge of exposed rock. It requires a bit of bouldering to work our way safely down to ground zero where we start our search. There was a picture of the hiding spot in the cache description but no container. Two people had posted DNFs a couple months ago so we thought it may be gone, but we persevered and made the find.  In theory we could follow this ridge back down to the creek we had crossed and the two Hidden Treasures caches were in that direction, but we would be on the wrong side of the creek and this trail doesn’t have a bridge so we opt to backtrack and take the longer but safer route.

Rocky Cliff Overlooking Valley

Need to Climb Back Up

When we make it back onto the Maverick Trail, we are looking for a lesser traveled side trail down into the valley on the eastern side of Devils Nose. If we had only been going for these two caches, the side trail would have been around the 0.4 mile mark but since we “picked the devils nose” first, the side trail was 2.5 miles into our hike.

Colorful Shelf Fungi

This trail was somewhat steep and was overlooking the creek below. Based on the water flow and the apparent depth of the creek, I think we made the correct call on playing it safe to get here.

Heading Down the Trail to Devils Pond

Falls in Creek

We found the first of the Hidden Treasures and continued down the path. Our destination was Devils Pond. As we approached ground zero, I let Chris find this one while I checked out the small waterfalls that lead to the pond. Supposedly this is a great place to swim but since it was a rather cool day instead of a hot summer day, we opted to stay dry. Chris was having trouble so I came over to help. We spent 20 minutes searching around in the rhododendron bushes on the side of a steep and wet hill without any luck. There was a spoiler picture that presumably showed the hiding spot but even with that to help us we were not making the find. The problem was that we really needed to find this one if we hoped to complete the series and collect our geocoin so we kept searching and eventually made the find of this well hidden cache.

Falls Dumping into Devils Pond

Devils Pond

From here, we had a one mile hike back uphill about 350 feet to get to the car. At one point while I was trying to get over a fallen tree across the trail, Chris yells that she hears a bear behind her. I’m pretty sure that I was more startled by her scream than I was by the possibility of a bear. For the next quarter mile or so, we were constantly keeping an eye out for a bear following us up the hill but it never materialized. It started to sprinkle when we were a few hundred yards from the car so our timing was pretty decent to get in a very nice hike and find a few caches and not get eaten by a bear - a good day in our book! It was just over a 4 mile hike with 760 feet of elevation gain.

Is There a Bear Following Us?

Millipede

The rain came in and the following day was a wet one. But a day later the weather improved and we head out for more of a sightseeing adventure. Harper’s Ferry is less than a 20 mile drive to the southeast of camp. This is an historic 1800’s town and Civil War location. The few other times we have been in the area, we were too focused on geocaching to come here but we carved out a day to spend exploring the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. The town is located at the far eastern tip of West Virginia at the confluence of the Shenandoah River from the south and the Potomac River to the north. On the other side of the Shenandoah is the state of Virginia and on the other side of the Potomac is the state of Maryland. There is fairly limited parking in the historic district of town but there is a large parking lot at the visitor center a few miles away. We stop here to stamp our National Park passport and take the free shuttle bus into Harpers Ferry.

Visitors Center at Harpers Ferry

The bus runs throughout the day and is a short enough trip that we only need to wait a few minutes before we get our ride. Once at the bus stop in town, we only have a couple blocks to walk to get into some of the historic buildings that are part of the national park.

Old Hardware Store

Elevated Railway

We head to “The Point” which overlooks the confluence of the rivers and continues as the Potomac southeast past Washington DC and onto the Atlantic Ocean. There is still a functioning railway and pedestrian bridge from Harpers Ferry to Maryland and we even got to see a freight train go by. There are also several piers standing that used to have other bridges into both Maryland and Virginia but there were taken out during the 1936 flood.

Missing Bridge to Virginia

Confluence of Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers

Maryland Across the River

Freight Train Come By

When we first had gotten to the Point, it looked like the pedestrian bridge and the railway bridge were one and the same. But as we headed to the walkway leading to the bridge, we realized there are two bridges. The main bridge we had seen the train go by on earlier is north of the bridge people walk across. Although this bridge is also a railway bridge, it sound like there are very few trains that ever cross here and all the main train traffic is on the other bridge. Both bridges lead right into a large tunnel in the rock on the Maryland side. This bridge is also part of the Appalachian Trail so every now and then we see some folks with rather large packs go across.

Pedestrian Bridge to Maryland

Train Tunnel

Once across the bridge, we head down the stairs and are on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Trail. We only walk far enough to see one of the old locks (#33) and the associated lock house. There is the Overlook Cliff Trail that starts about half a mile down the canal path which lead up to the Maryland Heights overlook. It sounded like a really nice view from there but it is almost a 3 mile roundtrip hike with nearly 1100 feet of elevation. We decide that we if we tackled this hike, we would need to skip a lot of the Harpers Ferry sites so back across the Potomac we go.

Old Lock House

The historic portion of Harpers Ferry is a few blocks. There are over a dozen buildings that are associated with the National Park. One houses a movie that describes the events that made the town famous back in 1859. Others are setup like museums or decorated like they would have appeared back 160 years ago. There is a large amount of history to be learned here. It would likely take a full day if you plan to visit each site and read all the displays. My attention span for this sort of thing is limited so we glossed over things more than a history buff would might be inclined to do.

John Browns Fort

More Old Buildings

Machine Shop

Next we head up the hill behind town. There is a big Catholic Church partway up the hill that is quite stunning. It was undergoing some sort of restoration so there was a fair amount of scaffolding. Just beyond this church, up even more stairs are the ruins of another church. And even further up is Jefferson Rock so named for Thomas Jefferson visiting this place back in 1783. We were working on an Adventure Lab that toured us around the area and one stop was even further up the hill into the local cemetery. The views from here are rather good but it did require us to climb up about 250 feet in elevation to get there.

St Peters Church

Side View

Ruins of Church

Jefferson Rock

Harper Cemetery

Nice View Up Here

We head back down the hill into town and checkout some of the historic buildings we missed. The train station is nicely restored and sits along the still active tracks.

Train Station

Tracks Behind Station

Beautifully Restored Inside Station

There are a fair number of privately owned building that are restaurants, gift shops or lodging for visitors. One store we checked out is called True Treats. It’s a candy store but unlike any we have seen before. They do sell candy but the more interesting aspect was how the store was arranged. Each cabinet showed various candies from hundreds of years ago until the present. It was fun to look over some of the candy from the 1900’s and recognize many of the as ones I bought as a kid or my grandmother would have in the candy bowl in her house when we would visit. It was truly a step back in time.

Town's Inn

Old Time Candy Store

White Hall Tavern

Outline of Former Building

We headed over to one of the historic buildings in the afternoon for a lengthy ranger talk. I was impressed with this guy’s knowledge of the dates and people from Harpers Ferry. We learned a lot in the hour we spent with him and a pretty good size group of other visitors.

By now I was “historied” out so we head back towards the bus stop. There was a rather long line and even though we had walked quite a bit already to see the various buildings in town, it was at a slow and somewhat tiring pace. There is a walking trail from town back to the visitor center. It is about 1.5 miles but there are a few other historic things to see along the way so it turned out to be a nice break. Much of it is on Virginius Island right along the Shenandoah River. There are remnants of old mills that used water power to operate. Being right along the river, many of these were destroyed by the various major floods over the years and all that remains are the stone foundations.

Mill Ruins

Another Old Mill

The rest of the walk is along the road and then up a steep hill to get back to the parking lot. This was definitely a full day of just over 6 hours.

Turtle Convention

Waterfall on Trail to Visitor Center

The next day was back to geocaching and finding a few more WVTim caches in the area. There is one in particular that I want to mention but I will warn other geocachers that the description I provide will be a spoiler. So if you want to fully experience the joy of finding GC2TJG2 - Under a Lamp Post, you will want to skip ahead a few paragraphs and pictures.

First a little background. A lamppost cache (LPC) is a fairly common hide especially in urban areas. The concept is to hide a the cache container under the “skirt” of a light pole seen in many parking lots at stores or malls. Most of the light poles are bolted down to a concrete pier and a sheet metal shroud slides over the 4 bolts to hide or protect them. This style of hide is a typically considered a rather lame geocache but they are all over the USA so you’ll likely come across one from time to time as a geocacher.

So back to Martinsburg and this “Under a Lamp Post” geocache hidden by WVTim. Over the years of coming to the area for caching, we have stopped at this one multiple times. It sounds like the typical LPC however it has many hundreds of favorite points awarded to it so there must be something unusual about it. The posted location brings us right to one of several light poles in a CVS parking lot. We have looked around and tried to find some unique hiding style since that is what WVTim is known for, but we have never been able to find it. This LPC had become a real challenge for us.

So in preparation for another return to the CVS store, Chris was scouring the past logs from this cache and found something that made it sound like the cache might actually be underground! Maybe there was some sort of storm drain or sewer grate nearby that we had missed? I opened up Google Earth and dropped into street view and saw what looked like a storm sewer that was in between one side of the CVS parking lot and the road. Maybe that was it? If so, I came prepared with a flashlight and clothes that I didn’t care if they got dirty and off we went to CVS.

I walked over past the lamp post in question to the edge of the parking lot. There was a steep drop off into a water catch basin with really tall weeds growing. I worked my way down the embankment and was greeted with a storm sewer opening. I was expecting a small one but this one was at least 7 feet in diameter since I was able to walk into it without ducking. I was so pleased that at least a wouldn’t need to crawl on all fours!

A Storm Sewer Awaits

As I headed into the storm sewer, I was a bit shocked as to how clean and dry the thing was. The concrete sections were about 20 feet long and some of the joints were tighter fitting than others. I could see light at the end of the tunnel about 300 feet away. As I walked through, I was looking for some sort of hidden container but I wasn’t very thorough since I was really curious what was on the other end. So I just kept going and eventually made it to the daylight on the other end.

Into the Abyss

Without crawling up out of the ditch, I wasn’t positive where I had come out but I could see a street sign. I guessed I was on the other side of the 5 lane road from the CVS lot. I waited to get my GPS signal back and guessed that the hide was about a third of the way from the end I had entered from. So I head back and when I guessed I was about halfway through the tunnel, I examined every nook and cranny. I made the assumption that the cache should be hidden above my head otherwise it would simply wash away during a heavy rain. Besides the gap between sections, some of the sections had a 3 inch diameter hole at the very top of the cylinder. Many of them had a plug but each plug I tried to move, I found them very firmly in place. Then I looked in another hole that didn’t have a plug and as I shined my light into it, I jumped back. There was a big hairy tarantula staring back at me! I made the educated guess this was not a real tarantula and pulled it down to find a small bison tube in the abdomen of the rubber arachnid. I signed in and replaced it in the hole for the next unsuspecting geocacher to find. Now it was clear why this cache has so many favorite points. I later looked at Google Earth and found the two ends of the storm sewer and sure enough, the lamppost in the CVS parking lot was pretty much right above it about 100 feet in from the nearby entrance.

Tarantula Hides

Red Line Shows Storm Sewer Path

The next day was a continuation of the search for more WVTim caches. We ended up all over town. A quick stop and short walk to one of the Hidden Treasure caches started out the day at a pretty spot - Stauffer’s Marsh. This was another one of the stops that we realized we had been here before doing other geocaches many years ago.

Stauffer's Marsh

Geese Galore

Part of the day was spent up in the mountains just west of town. It was back to the Sleepy Creek Wildlife Management Area where we had hiked to Devils Nose a few days earlier but now further south near Sleepy Creek Lake. The description from other cachers of the drive up the dirt road to the lake made it sound treacherous but we found the Jeep had no issues and I would think most passenger cars would have little issue if they take it slow over some of the rutted sections. We made the required find and sat in the parking area of a boat launch to enjoy the view while eating lunch.

Sleepy Creek Lake

Since we were up in the mountains, we headed to a few other caches hidden by WVTim even though they were not part of the series. One of the hides was a few hundred feet off the side of the dirt road with no real trail. We started out but Chris quickly decided she didn’t want to risk getting poison ivy and headed back to the car. I was in search of a cache named Wall of Rocks. So I had an idea of what I might find but the brambles for the first 100 feet or so made for a slow hike up the hill and I came out of the woods with pretty bloody legs - not a good time to be wearing shorts.

I found the wall of rocks pretty easily. I had quickly found a film can hidden in a nook in the rock wall covered by another small rack and texted Chris to tell her I found it. Only to open the container to see a note - “this is not the cache”. I hate finding decoy containers. After another 15 minutes, I finally found the well hidden cache and made my way back to the car. It was a pretty eventful and tiring day.

Find the Cache in Wall of Rocks