My Life Flashed Before My Eyes A Couple Dozen Times

I tend to think that I can handle all sorts of situations. The first night I was ever in Los Angeles there was a 7.1 earthquake at 3:30am and I was riding my bed on the 25th floor of a downtown hotel - no sweat. Then there was the time I was rock hunting in the upper peninsula of Michigan and came within 20ft of a full grown cougar in the wild, piece of cake. Venomous snakes in North Carolina? Pllllease. Yesterday though I truly felt I was in some real do-do.

The whole point was to grant a Christmas wish for my daughter Miss Geoness. She really wanted to spend the holidays with her family in Michigan. It's all she really wanted and I was dead set to getting her there. Until I saw on Thursday about the blizzard that was going to go through directly along out path. The only possible solution was to leave REALLY early on Friday instead of Saturday and try to beat the storm. If I couldn't make it back to Raleigh until Sunday then no big deal but at least Amanda could make it to Michigan.

The plan was pretty straight forward. I would leave 4:00am and drive straight through to Marietta, Ohio and meet up with the Grand Parents. That was a little more than half way and they could take her back to their house. Then I would book it back to North Carolina and try to beat out the storm. Ah the greatest plans of mice and men. The first part went very smoothly and we were out the door and travelling as expected. I was listening to the weather reports telling me how western North Carolina, Virginia and southern West Virginia were expecting anywhere from 12 to 28 inches of snow later in the day. This was not giving me that warm fuzzy feeling by any means. Yet I felt good when I made it to Marietta in just around 6.5 hours and it was only 10:30am. I said my greetings and gave my daughter the biggest hug before watching them drive north. Now it was my turn to drive into the belly of the beast.

Heading south I listened to each and every weather report I could in West Virginia. It sounded like the storm wouldn't be hitting Charleston until around 7pm so I was pretty confident that I wouldn't get stuck in a snowbank anywhere in West Virginia. It sprinkled slightly every once in a while in the mountains but no major concerns, onward I drove. Then came Virginia. Like someone flipping a light switch the heavy snowflakes came down and visibility dropped to about 100 feet or so. I knew this was the area that was going to get it the worst and I had to just buck it up and get through it.

"I can do this", I said to myself. Then I hit my first 5% truck grade. In all my driving experience I have never physically soiled myself but if there was ever a time that this unfortunate condition was going to transpire, this was it. Looking down the very long slope which just happened to end in sharp left turn with nothing but a guardrail and the promise of eternal sleep waiting at the bottom. I put my car in Low Gear #1, slightly applied the brakes and prayed. Much to my delight the car stayed where it was supposed to and did not slide as I expected.

Phew that was hill number one of many. I wasn't worried so much about my driving but all the

other idiots around me and there were whole

ditches filled with them. I seriously lost count after the first 50 or so. Everything from those little half tennis shoe looking cars to full sized tractor trailers laid waste before me as I puttered along.

Long story short I made it home between 8:30pm and 9pm in an exhausted heap. Which means it took me 10 hours to make it back. Thank the Big Guy upstairs all in one piece. I quite frankly never want to be in that situation again. I will fly to Michigan again before I take another adventure in the Virginian hills during a blizzard.

GeoCache: I'm NOT Obsessed... Right?
http://headhardhat-geocache.blogspot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------
Please don't forget to visit our GeoSnippits Geocaching Tutorial Videos Website at http://www.geosnippits.com

Daughter Geoness Milestone of 100 Finds!

The second half of Team HHB miss Amanda aka Geoness hit the 100 find mark. Not bad for someone who just started a couple of months ago. She has already attended several events and has taken on Difficulty 3 / Terrain 3 caches. Like the one at the FlashMob Flower Hill caches in North Carolina.



Geoness has cache finds in five states including Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. Often seen with dad HeadHardHat in the Raleigh and many neighboring cities. Geoness competes with HHH to find the cache first so she can be the first to sign the log. She helps a lot when it comes to micros and small caches but her eyes light up the most when ammo boxes are the target.





Please help congratulate the better half of Team HHB, daughter Geoness on her latest find milestone.

Congrats Geoness!

North Carolina Five Day Road Trip To Michigan Summary

Fourth of July weekend.... What Fourth of July weekend?

Well another road trip to Michigan from North Carolina is under my belt. Think that is about a dozen or so now but the important thing is daughter Amanda is back home. The weekend blew by like it was not even there and I currently feel like I was run over by a semi. Below is the complete summary and there are several phone-in articles showing mainly my adventures going from NC to Michigan. Coming back home was for the most part tiring, wet and storm drenched. Add in the multitudes of traffic and beyond belief gas prices and you get the gist. Here are the stats:

Days: Friday, Saturday, Sunday July 4 - 6, 2008

Miles: 1874 - including visits to my family on east side of Michigan

Average Price of Gas: $4.19 with highest in Michigan

Hours Coming and Going: 16 hours going to Michigan (add in caching)
15 hours coming back to NC (holiday traffic)



Caching States:
North Carolina
Virginia
West Virginia
Ohio
Michigan

Number of Caches Found: 18

Number of Travel Bugs/Coins Traded: 26

Number of police cars sighted: 48 - no kidding. Including one near my first cache near RDU airport.

Visited:
Four cemeteries including are really cool one from early 1800s in Virginia.
Multitudes of rest areas (some even to use the facilities).
Almost went crashing down two steep, wet, muddy, brier filled hills whilst caching.
Was interrupted by a small herd of hill climbing cattle (did not know they can do steep trails)
Found caching partner in the form of a large black snake who decided to be resting in a bush I was looking in. Did not see the business end but the side of it I did see was like a 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe.
Drove through numerous thunderstorms in West Virginia mountains and near home in Raleigh, North Carolina

Mutant Mantis and my micro GPS travel bugs logged 1095 miles on this trip.

All in all a fun but exhausting trip. Glad now to get back into the caching hunts of home.

North Carolina to Michigan Road Trip Summary

Wow! What a road trip and I know I had fun cuz I feel like a truck ran over me...

Here is a quick summary of what I encountered in three days:

Visited States: North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio and Michigan.

Number of miles: 1700 +

Caches Visited: 34

Caches Found: 29

New Caches I placed: 1 in Ohio and 2 in Virginia

New Travel Bugs Placed: 1 in Ohio and 1 in West Virginia


Photos of my sidekick TB Mantis taken: Lost count and it now has a rather big head about the whole thing.. See it's TB page here:
http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?guid=35fe742e-fb4b-4fcf-9fec-3634553b0045









Cache Environments:

Hiked at least 1/2 a mile into three different wooded areas (Virginia and West Virginia). No I did not see any bears, darn.

Hiked 1 1/2 miles into a swamp land for two caches. Granted the trails were way above par and wood chipped through 90% of them. The photos are breathtaking. (Ohio)

Must have hit every rest stop and service plaza through route.

Did a bunch of scouring in the St. Clair Shores area of Michigan and found the urban way of caching quite different to what I am used to. Introduced Geocaching to Brother Scott who now is completely hooked. He suffers from the same "shiny toys" syndrome that I do. I expect that a Garmin will be in his stocking any day now (why wait for Christmas?).

All in all a really great time though when you plan a trip like this you have to be very careful of how much caching you are going to do. I did not realize and the next thing I knew the 12 hour normal trip turned into an 18 hour very long trip (each way). So a note to the wise is to plan some overnight stops instead of plowing straight through.


Oh and if you want to see every blow by blow of my road trip. Please check out below from April 15th thru the 17th. All of those entries were sent in via my cell phone. Isn't modern technology great (when it works). Enjoy!