89SC

Last time one of these showed up on Ebay, a lot of emails were sent saying it was a stolen item and the listing was pulled.

The agency of that disk is United States (Army) Engineering Department which is now COE or Corps Of Engineers (US Army). That disk doesn't appear to be iron or in a headwall of a culvert.

My best snake picture is of this black rat snake. I was trying to get it off the road but it wasn't happy about it.

That's also the largest rivet I've seen. Anyone know what those numbers mean?

I'm way behind this year and just now logging my first find. I'm not the first to log this one but it's an interesting find. It's MA1233 a brass disk set in 1899: Also interesting is the fact that the railroad bridge was already abandoned in 1941 when the NGS last recovered it and the collection of other types of marks around it: There's a rivet inside a chiseled square and another chiseled square above or would you call it a diamond?

Here's what a guardrail grab looked like today in the mountains of West Virginia: Before: After: I was wishing I'd brought my metal detector so I could find the guardrail under all that snow.

I wasn't first on this one but it's another cool old one. JW0688

This is the coolest chiseld mark I've found. The surveyor must have had some time on his hands. I've been meaning to get some better pictures of it. We had to dig it up. It's JX0266. It was set in 1878 on the pier of a railroad trestle. It is a chisled square with the letter N above it, B and M on either side, USC and GS below, 1878 below that and then he carved his name.

I know of three of the old roadside Parks in WV that once belonged to the State of WV and no longer do. Two are historic sites with old iron furnaces. They still have shelters and picnic tables and one has a restroom but they are all now posted with Private Property and No Trespassing signs.

It's been awhile but I got a scenic picture today. It's HW3680 with Seneca Rocks in the background.

There are a bunch of benchmarks along a railroad in our area that were reported as not found by the NGS when they didn't even look for them. Their notes read: 1/1/1983 by NGS (MARK NOT FOUND) RECOVERY NOTE BY NATIONAL GEODETIC SURVEY 1983 NOT RECOVERED, THE MARK IS INACCESSIBLE TO THE NEW LEVEL LINE AND WAS NOT SEARCHED FOR IN 1983. I have one changed to found. It's JX0171

I found an old van lost in the woods and thought it would make a great first stage for In A Van Down By The River I placed the cache in March and in June I get a log saying someone ripped the passenger side of the van off. It wasn't much of a van to begin with but tearing it apart to find a cache is kind of crazy. Here are before and after pictures: When it was hidden: A little over 2 months later:

C.A.C.A. Gas Guzzler 12 Stages in WV and PA. Minimum drive distance: 331 miles. (Assuming you know the shortest routes, encounter no traffic and all the roads are open.) Minimum drive time: 7 hours 41 mins. (Not including parking/hiking/seeking/cursing time.) 12 different cachers each put out a stage.

I had a really good month too. My yearly total should double next month

You have to get down to their level to get the good shots. This is a younger black rat snake from the week before. It was even more aggressive. It kept striking at the lens.

I stopped to get this black rat snake off the road while on the way to HW2048 It wasn't too happy about it.

A couple of pictures from a hike to a couple of benchmarks. HW3443 a triangulation station and HW3446 a stone lookout tower in Virginia. The tower: A toad along the trail:

I seem to get most of my good photos while caching but here is some fancy stonework on an old jail that JX0328 is attached to. Nice old (1903) benchmark on a cool old building. Of course with that camera on the building, it wasn't long before a Deputy came out asking me what I was doing.

It's finally warming up around here. After finding stage 9 of a multi, I turned around to find this guy watching me:

Doing a search online, I found that they got a grant from FEMA under Project Impact in April 1997 for flood control so the disk was set some time after that. I can't find any mention of the disks in the articles I've found. I wonder how many were set.

A new cache brought attention to an old marker. I was caching on a section of Rail Trail in Hambleton,WV and came across JX0870 with some company. JW0870 The Randoph Tucker Disc The National Forest boundary marker The Randolph Tucker disc is part of a FEMA flood control project.

Fawn by one of my caches: Eastern Box Turtle: Toad:

I love the old courthouses. This one is in Ripley, WV. HX2454

It's amazing what dry weather can do. This is what I'm used to dealing with: That's 1943 concrete on a railroad trestle.

Here's a some more snow and how often do you see a description like this: JW1052 "0.58 METER (1.9 FT) NORTHWEST OF THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF THE CONCRETE BASE OF A LARGE ARTILLERY SHELL"