2022-10-01 42 -78

Location

In the woods of Raecher Hill State Forest

Participants

Pedalpusher
J
Simon the dog
Myka the dog

Expedition

I told my girlfriend J about this Geohash and asked her if she was interested in joining us on another Expedition. She was agreeable and because we were planning on having people over at her house for a backyard fire, we would have to skip the Official Saturday Meetup option. We were planning on getting there around lunchtime though so I thought this would be a great opportunity to finally pick up the Picnic Achievement. J was kind enough to bring over her large insulated lunch bag to serve as our 'picnic basket' and I packed a small blanket.

J got to my house around mid-morning and we made lunches and packed snacks for our picnic and got the dogs ready to go. As we were leaving, I jumped from the HashDroid app to Google Maps to get directions towards the end of the drive, but I didn't look too closely at it. Normally, I study the route and have a good idea where we were going, but I trusted Google Maps today. As we were getting close to the end of the drive on the maps, I realized we were likely going in the wrong direction. Pulling over to look at the map, we were definitely on the wrong side of the State Forest and on a different road to access it. However, that area is known to not have great signal and I couldn't redirect the phone to take us to the correct road. Fortunately, I had enough resolution a little zoomed out that I could see we would be able to 'go around the block' and get to the access road from the other side.

Finally able to drive up, I wasn't sure where we would have to park as we would be passing two gates. The first gate was open and we were able to drive a lot closer and park at the second that was closed. We wouldn't have been able to drive past it anyway because it wasn't maintained and there was a tree across not too far down. We don't mind hiking and we got our bright orange shirts on us and the dogs (Deer Season opened today with archery) and we wanted to be seen just in case. Although, I wasn't expecting to see anyone as there were no cars parked here and it was unlikely someone would be walking in from an adjacent property.

The walk to the end of the road was easy and getting into the woods was going to be a breeze because under the trees was very open. Getting to the hash area, I had a quick GPS dance and got a bunch of pictures of the area. I then got out the blanket for our lunch, but J had other ideas. Ever since she learned we had a Sex ribbon, she has been dying to accomplish this at a Geohash. I've been reluctant, because we're out in public and I'm not all that comfortable, plus having the dogs with us in these spots were we can do this is also distracting. But I finally relented and we did the deed while the dogs kept themselves busy chewing on sticks and exploring the area. It was a bit chilly so we didn't fully strip down and can't claim the Geoflashing ribbon, but we kept ourselves warm enough. After cleaning up, we got out our lunches and completed our second new ribbon, taking picture proof of this one.

After spending some time relaxing in the woods at the Geohash, we started hiking back to the car. As we came out of the woods, I saw a capri sun pouch in the grass at the end of the forest road so I made this a GeoTrash hash as well. Those pouches will likely last forever and I didn't want to leave that out in nature. Adding it to our ziplock garbage bag, I disposed of it when I got home. Since we still had plenty of time, I set my phone alarm for 15 minutes and we continued walking down the forest road past the car for an extended hike, but didn't see anything of note besides enjoying ourselves in nature.

We then had a great evening with friends, fire and beer to round out this fantastic day.

Photos

Walking up the Forest Road to the end, Simon found a huge 'stick' to carry around for a while.
Perfectly Made it!
Accuracy.
Standard Stupid Grins,
and HashDogs.
View West-ish and sort-of the direction from where we walked in.
View South-ish from the hash.
View East-ish.
View North-ish.
A view of the hash, before we put our blanket down.
After our 'extra-curriculars', we had a Picnic!
On the way out, I found some garbage :(
but also some cool fossils :)
Giant caterpillar that turned out to be a giant leopard moth which is our largest eastern tiger moth.