Blind Dates and Bridgeport — Life Downstream

The best weekends are those spent with all kinds of friends, even better is when the begin on adventures that change their lives and better still is when they remove large items from my home so new projects and concepts may be embarked upon. With a little bit of fuel from Tudors Biscuit World, this Saturday held a lot of promise.

Indeed, before Chris even had a chance to get back to the house with our biscuits, Courtney and her dad rolled up in his truck to remove a queen sized bed that had been taking up space in our basement far too long. She wanted a new bed and I had a like new bed that was causing my camping and hiking gear to be strewn about the house in the most annoying way. Now I would have room for shelves! Chris did make it back in time to help get everything loaded into the truck, for the 90 minute ride up to Dunbar, PA we wanted to be triple sure there would be no problems.

Already having my day made by having one of the rooms in my basement back, we prepared to send Jenn off on a quasi-blind date. She’d texted and Facebooked the guy a little bit, but Chris was the master matchmaker. On one hand, we recognized there was a chance she’d bolt and come running back within an hour or so, we also had plans of our own.

We headed south toward Bridgeport to find some geocaches. The weather seemed like it could go either way, such is life in the autumn in West Virginia, though we were not expecting a hailstorm. That was a surprise. Thankfully, Bridgeport is also an excellent shopping destination so as we waited out the ridiculous weather, we continued (but failed) in our quest to find a one-gallon jug and bought printer ink. We’re so exciting. Meanwhile, we thought of how Jenn’s date must be going, as they were hiking at Coopers Rock State Forest and we couldn’t imagine that a hailstorm up there on a first date would fall under the category of a “good time.”

Eventually the weather broke and the fun commenced. We found a total of 10 caches and got, what we felt, was a good tour of the Bridgeport area. The highlights include:

A quaint old graveyard by an old country church we had never heard of before
The largest bus stop cache we’d ever seen, with a trackable perfect to take on my upcoming trip to Canada
Finally checking out the North Central West Virginia Airport (and its cache), which is just outside of Bridgeport even though its IATA code is CKB (for Clarksburg)
At The End Of My Rope, My First Cache, a unique cache in central Bridgeport that, at the time of this post, has accumulated 31 favorite points
The home of Michael L. Benedum, now a civic center next to a park and municipal swimming pool in central Bridgeport

I also finally had a chance to try out Meagher’s Irish Pub for lunch. This joint is in the new Charles Pointe development off of Benedum Dr just north of Bridgeport. I had heard wonderful things about the food and it lived up to the hype, at least the meal I had sure did. Having grown up in British Columbia and with many Britons for friends, I sometimes get uncontrollable cravings for real fish and chips. Meagher’s satisfies this need. I strongly recommend stopping in for a bite if you’re down this way (Exit 124 off of I-79 in WV). Besides, it’s a nice diversion from all of the chains and fast food you’ll find off of Emily Drive.