Friday, April 8, 2011

The Bridges of Madison County

A couple of weeks ago me and a co-worker had to work out of town over in Winterset, Ia.  What an interesting area.  In town you have John Wayne's birthplace, along with a really cool bronze statue.  As well as this "castle" type thing out in  one of the parks.  We got a little time to go and check out a few of the covered bridges.  I've never seen the movie that some of these bridges where in but they where pretty cool to see.

So far after doing some research on the net, there used to be 19 covered bridges in Madison county, but today only 6 remain, and only one you can still drive across.  I wish I would of had done some research ahead of time to know more about the bridges.  I did just learn the bridge you can drive across was just repaired in 95 after an arson fire, and I guess they have had a few problems with this.  We noticed a box at each end of the bridges, that housed camera's.  We where guessing it was trying catch anyone up to no good.

It was awesome to see the old construction of the bridges.  Very interesting plus using curved pieces of woods back in the day these where built.  It had to be quite the task building them.  It your in the area and have some time, check them out, they are really neat to see.  I'll leave you with some pictures I took of them.








Monday, April 4, 2011

Hanover Bluffs

This past weekend I went on a little road trip to go around and look for a few terracaches and a few geocaches.  I 'm not sure how I got as far into Illinois as I did, but sometimes you just get going and notice another cache on the map that looks interesting.  I really enjoyed this terracache called Hanover Bluffs.  Also in the are is a geocache called Hanover Bluffs (GC).  In the Hanover Bluffs area there was a geo pretty close to the parking area and the terracache was pretty far into the area.

I got a kick out of this sign as I started down the trail.


At this point in time I wasn't sure where you could swim.  But as I got deeper into the area I did find a lake that I think they where talking about.  I also found this little spot and decided to do a little skinny dipping.  J/K
As I kept following the path, which seemed just to go downhill the whole time.  I finally made it to a spot where I had to do some climbing to get to ground zero.  Normally I would play billy goat but   I had a head cold and every time I went up 10 feet up the hill I had to stop and catch my breath.  Once I made it to ground zero, There was a lot of places to look.  I spend the next 20 minutes looking for the cache but wasn't able to find the cache.  Finally I decided to sit down for a bit and just relax.  As I was sitting there, I looked over and noticed something, and sure enough it was the cache.  I looked threw the logbook for a bit, and then signed it.  I rehid the cache and started back down the the trail.  I wanted to explore the area a bit more, and was walking along on the edge of the trail and almost tripped over a benchmark.

After that I walked around on the trails a bit and found where they where talking about no swimming.  Finally it was time to head back to the car.  Now since I went down hill the entire time on the way in, sure enough it was up hill the whole way out.  But I really enjoyed this hunt.  I just wish I wouldn't of had a head cold.