We had celebrated the birth of a nation by visiting three of the finest caches in the southwestern part of state that was the site of America’s formation (Pennsylvania!) and then dining with one of our many families. After a pleasant night at the DoubleTree near the Pittsburgh Airport (though surprisingly dirty: lots of other people’s hair all over the pool area and unknown substance on the toilet seat in the room), we regrouped and decided to change our caching strategy.
We had been seeking caches in the top 100 by favorite points within 200 miles of Morgantown, WV (caveat, our laziness put a hard, and very low limit, on the terrain we were willing to tolerate). We decided on the next day, July 5, to start with one of these caches but then “free cache” on the Northern Panhandle until, basically, we got hungry enough to head down to our favorite DiCarlo’s Pizza location (downtown Wheeling! …though I’ve been told it’s worth defecting to the Glen Dale location).
Our first stop of the day, a cache at the World's Largest Teapot
To us, free caching is when you don’t have a specific aim or theme in mind. For us, we merely applied our maximum desired terrain rating and bounced from cache to cache all over Brooke, Hancock, and Ohio counties. Because we don’t routinely cache there, there were many to choose from and selecting a specific terrain rating was helpful as to not completely overwhelm us. Plus, even when free caching, it can just get obnoxious to drive in half-mile increments.
For our efforts, we found 13 geocaches and discovered two things we found to be particularly interesting.
The Margaret Manson Weir Memorial Pool in Marland Heights Park was a pleasant surprise after picking up a seemingly average guardrail cache in a seemingly average neighborhood. It was recently listed on Preserve WV’s most endangered list for this year, which is how I knew about it. But the pool, opened in 1934, has a unique architectural charm lacking in so many structures today that are focused on function before form (which is a noble goal, but I can’t imagine my local pool in Morgantown being something I or anyone else will care about in 80 years). And, truthfully, West Virginia just doesn’t have a lot of art deco structures. This isn’t Miami Beach, where even the Burger King is authentically art deco.
The other interesting then we discovered are the old bridges over Buffalo Creek on the road to Bethany College (another gorgeous side trip!) from Wellsburg. While after finding only one of these caches we were frustrated over the placement of another (if I have to drive 6 feet into overgrowth on a day that feels very snaky, it’s not a terrain level 1!). We love looking at old infrastructure, even if it is of the old, worn out, and purely utilitarian sort (maybe I will still be interested in the Marilla Park pool in 80 years…).While heading back towards West Virginia State Route 2 we also discovered that when the road along Buffalo Creek, the Bethany Turnpike, was first cut through it actually had two tunnels, the first highway tunnels west of the Alleghenies, to get through the rough terrain, though my husband was crestfallen to discover that the tunnels are long gone (but their locations are identified on this old map).
So even seeking out the less exciting or highly rated caches in an area has rewards. Or maybe it is just our undying love of infrastructure.
