Geocaching in Ohio 2019

Our summer vacation this year started with a road trip to our travel destination, Minnesota. On the way, we stopped in Maumee, Ohio. The main attraction was its location--about half way to where we wanted to go. We had a fine drive with little napping, so everyone but me was zonked out after we ate dinner. While everyone else went to bed, I went out to find some geocaches near the hotel.

With the end of June comes plenty of evening sunshine in Ohio. We were in the western end of the Eastern Time Zone, so the sun seemed to be up even later. America does daylight savings time, so the clock is shifted to have more evening sunshine. I was able to find five geocaches in a little over an hour and still get home before sunset.

Still plenty of sunlight left

The first find was Telecom MMXII, which was a small cache I expected to be in one spot but was in different location. The cache's write up warns of high muggle activity in the area. Geocachers call non-geocachers "muggles," and hope not to be discovered by the uninitiated. Or worse, to be reported to the authorities for suspicious activity. Geocaching does often lead to poking around in odd spots, I can see how the activity looks questionable. At any rate, things were fairly quiet on a Saturday evening.

I always hang out around power boxes, don't you?

The second discovery was While in the area IV - Long horn, which is clearly part of a series. This cache looked like it would have more muggle trouble. It's situated between two sit-down restaurants, which were fairly busy on a Saturday night. Luckily, that section of the parking lot didn't have too many people wandering around. I've found caches hidden like this before, so I had a quick find when I discovered ground zero was in the middle of the lot.

More cars means more exposure

The log book in the cache was cool--micro-pages connected with a small bolt. Finding the next empty page was easy!

A cool log book

The third cache was Dem Bones. This hide was also right by a parking lot for a busy restaurant, so I used some stealth. Again, the location was a classic that I have run into before, so it seemed pretty obvious where to look. The find actually does have some cover from muggle eyes.

Good cover from muggles

The fourth cache was a bit further away in a business-park area, so no worries about muggles. Second or Sixth - it's all in how you look at it. is nicely hidden in a spot that would be exposed to prying eyes during the work week. All the parking lots around me were empty, so no muggles to cause struggles.

Items in question

The fifth and final cache was Indianwood. Whoever designed the business park was nice enough to leave a fairly big wooded park in the middle. A couple of trails lead into the park, I think I found the spookiest looking entrance.

Good design, poor maintenance?

After wandering around the trails and wondering if the daylight would hold out, I wound my way to the right spot. The cache was fun to find but I was a little concerned about the vegetation growing around it. I was in short pants and thus exposed to any poison ivy or other potentially harmful plant. Nothing had grown too high yet, so I was okay.

Innocuous-seeming trail

A tough choice made easier by following my GPS

The park really did have a creepy atmosphere at twilight. I kept expecting some creature to leap out of the trees at me, hopefully only a deer or some such benign being. I found a gazebo that the forest was slowly reclaiming. Yeah, this area could definitely be the setting for a quality low-budget horror film.

Just the place to take a date...with whom you want to break up!

The worst of the critters I encountered were flying and biting insects. I made my way out of the woods by trying more trails. Happily, I made it out okay.

A fork in the path

My exit is not very visible

This was a fun area for geocaching and it was nice to get an hour or so of walking in after a day of driving in the car.