It’s a meeting of the Grand Strand Geocachers! Join us at the Sticky Fingers in North Myrtle Beach on Saturday, June 5^th, 2010 at 1 p.m. Come and join us for fun, prizes, and good times!

To attend, please RSVP on the cache page for GC27VEM.

We also wanted to get the word out about the……

GEMS OF THE GRAND STRAND

The Grand Strand Geocachers Association is now taking nominations for their inaugural Gems of the Grand Strand Awards 2010. Nominate your favorite area caches in ten categories. The top five caches in each category will continue on to the voting round, which will take place between September 11, 2010 – October 9, 2010. Be sure to cast your cache nomination to be considered a ‘Gem of the Grand Strand’.

Nominations for Gems of the Grand Strand end Labor Day, Monday September 6, 2010 at midnight.

Rules:
1. Caches must be published and submitted for nominations before the deadline.
2. Anyone who has a valid profile on Geocaching.com can nominate a cache located in the following counties: Horry, Georgetown, Marion and Williamsburg.
3. Only one nomination per cacher, per category is permitted.
4. Caches cannot be archived or disabled at the time of voting (i.e. it could be disabled for maintenance at the time of nomination but must be active at the time of voting.)
5. For these inaugural 2010 awards, all caches placed until end of nominations (09/06/10) are eligible. New time constraints will take effect next year.
6. Caches can be nominated for multiple categories (i.e. best new cache, best traditional, etc.)

Nominations are being taken in the following categories:

1. Best Traditional (excluding micros)
2. Best Micro
3. Best Multi-Cache
4. Best Mystery/Puzzle Cache
5. Best Earth Cache
6. Best Event & CITO Event
7. Most Remote Cache (no other cache within a 2 mile radius, excluding Mystery/Puzzle Caches)
8. Best Series (must be of a series of at least 3)
9. Best Camo
10. Best New Cache (must be placed after 09/06/09)

The top five nominations from each category will be voted on by geocachers from
Saturday, September 11, 2010 until Saturday, October 9, 2010 at midnight.
You may only vote once in each category for a cache.

To vote, visit: http://www.marvinjdesign.com/nominate
Gems of The Grand Strand Awards Ceremony will be held on Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 2 p.m.

More information TBA!

ON THE ROAD WITH TWEETY & COACH
Be sure to catch up with TWEETY & COACH ON THE ROAD as they start anew this newsletter. They will begin their narrative after they last left Myrtle Beach. Follow along with them, as they explore our country by RV, caching along the way!

FTFs:
Congrats to all FTF cachers! Let’s keep the fun alive by placing more caches throughout our area! If you ever need tips, hints, or ideas, please feel free to contact Marvin J & Zephyr, or check out geocaching.com.

As always, if you have a news item, event, or article idea for the newsletter, please contact Marvin J & Zephyr!

See you Saturday!

We then packed up the next day and headed for a week’s stay in St. Augustine, FL. It has been 39 years since we have been to St. Augustine when we used to camp in our tent camper at the Kon-Tiki Campgrounds right on the ocean with our 4 boys. I still wear a hand carved wooden cross that I had made for me by a wood carver who had a shop right on the beach.

On to some caches… Our first cache was GC1MVYP “Florida Geocache Benchmark Project” and was located at the St Augustine Visitor’s Center where you went in asked for the geocache container and they gave you the ammo box in which the cache was located. After we signed the log we copied the coords for the only geocache benchmark in the state of Florida and walked outside to find the actual benchmark. This benchmark is 4 inches in diameter and has a stud on the bottom that is 3 inches long that protrudes into the concrete. The concrete pedestal is approximately 5 foot deep and 12 inches in diameter with the lower part of the base approximately 24 inches in diameter.

Next cache was a virtual cache located a beautiful old church in the city GCNH8C “Cathedral Basilica”. This church dates back to the late 1700’s when the Spanish crown ordered the construction of a new parish church for St. Augustine. The property bounded by St. George Street on the west, Treasury St. on the north and the plaza to the south was chosen as the site. The cornerstone was laid in 1793 and the church was completed in August 1797. The first Mass was celebrated on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The church was “America’s First Parish and continues to serve the residents and visitors of St. Augustine today.

Next was another virtual cache GCB34B “Hot Shots” which was located outside the walls of the Castillo San Marcos which is the Spanish built fort in the city. It was known as Fort Marion from 1821 until 1942, and Fort St. Mark from 1763 until 1784 while under British control. The Castillo is a masonry star fort made of a stone called coquina, literally “little shells”, made of ancient shells that have bonded together to form a type of stone similar to limestone. Workers were brought in from Havana, Cuba, to construct the fort. The coquina was quarried from Anastasia Island across the bay from the Castillo, and ferried across to the construction site. Construction lasted twenty-three years, being completed in 1695. The cache was located at the Hot Shot Furnace which was a structure for heating cannon balls to be shot at wooden vessels and to set them on fire.

Another very interesting cache in St. Augustine was GC1WM3Y “Old Spanish Quarry Earthcache. Castillo San Marcos Fort and the quarry where the stone was taken to build the fort. First we had to visit the fort and take a picture in front of it. Spanish colonists had built the fort from coquina rock quarried from Anastasia Island. It is the oldest masonry and only extant 17th century fort in North America. Next part of the cache was we had to go to the quarry where the coquina was taken and take some pictures and answer 3 questions about the site. The history of the coquina we felt was very interesting.

Coquina rock links Anastasia Island to the charismatic architecture and history of St. Augustine. More than 300 years ago, Native American Indians, enslaved Africans, and the Spanish worked coquina quarries of Anastasia Island to construct the Castillo de San Marcos fortress. In Anastasia State Park you may take a short walk down a shaded and signed trail to view the site of these labors.

When the quarries were active, St. Augustine (founded in 1565) was a struggling outpost of Spain’s American empire. Spanish soldiers built their homes and forts out of local pine, palm, and palmetto, but these wooden settlements were repeatedly destroyed or burned by pirates and raiders. Soon the Spanish discovered a better building material on Anastasia Island: coquina rock.

Acquisition of coquina rock was difficult, but resulted in durable and solid buildings. The workers hewed out squares of the relatively soft, wet stone with hand-tools and loaded them onto carts. Oxen dragged these heavy loads to the water, where the blocks were barged across Matanzas Bay to the town of St. Augustine.

Finally, in 1671, large-scale quarrying began in the stone pits. Anastasia Island was even called “Cantera”, Spanish for “quarry”. Early on, quarrying was limited by manpower, engineering skills, and money. In 1598 workers had cut out enough coquina blocks to build a gunpowder storage magazine. Finally, in 1671, the Spanish embarked on large-scale quarrying on Anastasia Island. At this time, the island was called “Cantera,” Spanish for quarry.

The people of St. Augustine didn’t realize they had happened upon an amazing defensive material. As the soft stone was exposed to air, it hardened. The Spanish waterproofed coquina stone with plaster and paint, so the coarse rock structures you see today, such as the Castillo de San Marcos and city gates, would have looked more refined. However, when besieging ships bombarded the Castillo, the walls simply absorbed the cannon balls. The Castillo de San Marcos was never captured in battle, thanks in at least part to the rock made of tiny shells, coquina.
Spanish, British, and Americans in turn prized coquina as a building material and went to great lengths to obtain it. By the late 1700s, Native American Indian populations were decimated and the Spanish primarily employed enslaved Africans to work the quarries. The quarries were not exhausted and today some coquina is still quarried commercially.

Coquina rock is part of a sedimentary formation that underlies much of the Atlantic shore of Florida.

The story of coquina rock begins in West Africa, where a similar rock formation is found. Coquina forms a sedimentary structure underlying much of the Atlantic shore of Florida, and geologists believe eons ago, before the continents drifted apart, these formations were connected. Sand and Donax variabilis clam shells accumulated when sea levels were higher and the area was underwater. Later, during a glacial period about 125,000 – 100,000 years ago, the sea level dropped. Rain dissolved calcium carbonate from the shells, cementing the mix of quartz and shells together into coquina rock.

The word “coquina” means “tiny shell” in Spanish. It was the name they gave to the Donax variabilis clam that was abundant on the northeast Florida beaches. It is the predominant shell in the rock. As you might have read it is very interesting how they mined it and built the fort from it. It was quite interesting reading about the coquina and wondering how they had gotten all of it from where they mined it to where they built the fort without all the machinery that is available these days.

Another piece of history we visited was another virtual cache GCGMAE “WOW That’s Big”. It was at the location of The Old Senator a over 600 year old oak tree. The tree has stood there as a testament to Ponce de Leon’s discovery of Florida and the Fountain of Youth which is about 600 feet away.

The rest of our stay in St. Augustine consisted of a few NRV caches and a lot of walking and sightseeing. One of our walking tours was Aviles Street which was named after the city of St. Augustine’s founder, Aviles, Spain and holds much more interest when its story comes to light. Many of the homes scattered along both sides of this narrow cobble stoned street are well over two hundred years of age, and the shopping is simply wonderful. The first thing you’ll notice if you’re starting from the main entrance is the huge wooden archway quaintly stating the name of the street. To your left will be a huge pink (yes, pink, no matter what color the original inhabitants chose to call it) house with wooden balconies. This is the Seth Wakeman House, a historical home easily noticed along the main thoroughfare. The Wakeman House is just one of the old homes you will see along Aviles Street. The Father Miguel O’Reilly House, completely restored and filled with period furnishings, is a great stop. Another stop was St. George Street which at one time was the main street of the colonial city. The Oldest House, located three blocks south of the Plaza at 14 St. Francis Street, is another traditional Spanish Colonial residence built circa 1706 and is the oldest surviving residence in the city’s history. This area south of the Plaza is the oldest part of St. Augustine, and there are several other original structures along narrow St. Francis, St. George, Aviles, and Marine Streets. Many are private residences, but some are open to the public. The street are closed to vehicles so you are able to walk up and down them freely and look in the many many shops and historical sites. On both sides of the street, old houses provide some beautiful photo opportunities with their overhanging balconies. Many historic homes are filled with shops of all kinds. One other interesting thing we saw across from the Cathedral Basilica was an archeological dig. It was in a small park across from the church and supposedly someone had found some old old old buttons there so the locals were exploring to see what else they could find.

After our stay in St. Augustine we headed to Lake City, FL, Mexico Beach, FL, Robertsdale, AL, Bay St. Louis, MS, Waveland, MS and Gulfport, MS on our way to “The Big Easy” New Orleans.

So until next time from New Orleans, this is Tweety and Coach saying HAPPY CACHING to all our friends in Myrtle Beach and around the Grand Strand!

Come out and celebrate the 10th anniversary of Geocaching as part of a Groundspeak worldwide multi-event. A meeting will be held from 1:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. at Margaritaville, located at Broadway at the Beach.

Please note, there will be a special icon for those who log one of the 10 Years! events. As part of that, we have to provide Groundspeak with a group photo of our event attendees. For our group photo, please have your GPS on hand. You will be provided with a surprise item that you must wear for the photo.

To attend, please RSVP on the cache page for GC23WR7.

There will be a Myrtle Beach exclusive Geocaching 10th Anniversary Event Geocoin available for purchase by those who attend this event. Coins will be $10 each. They are trackable with a custom icon. Coin photos are posted in the gallery of the cache event page.

A few door prizes will also be given away. So be sure to get a red ticket from this meeting’s host, AtlantaGal, when you sign the attendance sheet for the event!

ON THE ROAD WITH TWEETY & COACH
Be sure to catch up with TWEETY & COACH ON THE ROAD as they start anew this newsletter. They will begin their narrative after they last left Myrtle Beach. Follow along with them, as they explore our country by RV, caching along the way!

FTFs:
Congrats to all FTF cachers! Let’s keep the fun alive by placing more caches throughout our area! If you ever need tips, hints, or ideas, please feel free to contact Marvin J & Zephyr, or check out geocaching.com.

GEMS OF THE GRAND STRAND:
Also, new this year, the Grand Strand Geocachers will hold their first annual Gems of the Grand Strand Awards! This is a great way to acknowledge all the great caches here on the Grand Strand. Nominations in 10 categories are open now, with voting to commence in the fall. Head over to the Nominations page to submit your favorite local caches for consideration. If you have questions concerning the Gems of the Grand Strand Awards, contact EZTrack.

As always, if you have a news item, event, or article idea for the newsletter, please contact Marvin J & Zephyr!

See you Saturday!

Although we last left you traveling the Natchez Trace to Godlettsville, TN, we are skipping ahead almost two years to the present. We’re starting anew this newsletter, beginning our narrative after we last left Myrtle Beach to start our caching travels again. We’re taking you along with us, as we explore our country by RV, caching along the way!

On March 3^rd, we left Myrtle Beach, and headed south to the campgrounds in Yemassee, SC. Once we were settled, it was time for caching!

The first interesting cache we started with was a virtual cache just a few miles from us, GC2D54 “Sheldon Ruins”, which was at the Prince Williams Parish Church. The walls remain today and it is a spectacular place to visit. For Chaplain Joseph Furse, the great-grandfather of Pierce Countian Sam Owens, and other Confederates, the local history around Pocotaligo did not seem to be the most important item in their lives in 1861. For the Englishman William Bull, born 1683, who had helped establish the Sheldon Church, the Pocotaligo vicinity was now home. This location had become the core of his family’s existence. Here, entombed inside “his” church, are the remains of a man who had been an honorable member of the Colonial House of Commons from 1706-1719, colonel of the Berkley County Regiment during the Tuscadora and Yemassee wars, Lord Proprietors Deputy, and holder of various other leadership positions.

This place had been sacred to William Bull and his family, who had emigrated from Warwickshire, England. Happenings here, as the colonies became states, meant a great deal to him, but he was dead and buried beneath a slab in his church. He would not know that a renowned military man, Robert E. Lee, would visit here, or that a General William T. Sherman would burn it a second time in 1865. Neither would Sam Owen’s Great-Grandfather Joseph J. Furse, whose letters had ended before either officer’s campaigns. Today, the majestic outline of the old Sheldon Church still stands in the deep forest. These ruins, reported not to be on any map, was once Church of Prince William’s Parish, built between 1745 and 1755, before the American Revolution. It followed the Greek temple imitation in America, with impressive Tuscan columns, towering walls and massive arches. The British army burned it in 1799, during the Revolutionary War. It was rebuilt in 1826, and renamed Sheldon Church of Prince William’s Parish, only to face conflagration again at the hands of Sherman’s arsonists in 1865 during the Civil War.

Joseph, writing from the same area in 1861, speaks of getting items from home: “… I received the Carpet Bag – with articles sent. You can have no idea how dirty it gets in Camp. Standing (at) our lightwood knot fire, we are smoked almost black….” Then the serious note: “…the Yankees are in sight all of the time and often fire on the guards….” Pocotaligo, missed today if one blinks his eye while traveling the trail, stands tall now. It is pinpointed as a battlefield. It will be remembered in many places in years to come as the place where “21 men were killed and 37 wounded or captured by the Rebs in the Battle of Pocotaligo.” Lehigh County’s Pennsylvania’s Soldiers & Sailors Monument underscores it just as it does those lost at Antietam and Chancellorsville; however, many of the Yanks who were involved in this section of the world saw it as the Battle of Tullifinny, referring to the Tullifinny River that runs through the area.

But, now Joseph Furse, along with the others at Camp Martin in Pocotaligo, wondered where this coming conflict, which now seemed to be lengthening, would take them. Had he lived, this farmer-minister-soldier, like all his peers, would have witnessed the tragic ending of one way of life and the beginning of another, vastly different existence. “I often get homesick. …,” the soldier confessed, adding that a friend says that it is evident because “…he says he can see it in my countenance very plainly. … Our company will all be uniformed in a few days. We are not armed … At night, some are enjoyed in reading the Bible or prayers – some playing on the violin – some singing all sorts of songs – and a great many other amusements, all going on at the same time.” Then an abrupt change in the letter: “The cars are now passing –Good bye. We are just called off to attack the Yankees at Mackey’s Point….”

On December 6, 1861, again from Camp Martin, Pocotaligo Station, South Carolina: “… I have been quite sick with influenza since I last wrote you, but I am happy to say that I am much better. … I know not what moment I may be called into battle. Should I be killed, I know that I will die in a glorious cause and find that God will be with me through all trials and finally save me in His kingdom. I often dream and think of you all. Though absent in person, I am present in thought and feeling with you….” Chaplain Furse’s last letter, December 10, 1861, reveals that his “cold is much better” and that the weather is most changeable at Pocotaligo Station. “…There is a good deal of sickness in camp, mostly colds, nothing of a serious nature. Some sixty men from this regiment went down on Beaufort Island the other day. This Colonel, with several men, went on ahead scouting the Yankees and ran into an ambush. … One man was shot several times, and it is reported that we killed him and wounded some others….” Victory was not achieved this day “for the Yankees ran.”

The Unionists, at this time, were stationed at Port Royal, near Beaufort, South Carolina. As the fighting narrowed for the Rebs and Yanks, Colonel Martin, Furse’s commanding officer, heard the Northern officer shout, “Stop! You damned rebels!” Furse writes for the last time: “We are in the midst of exciting times. Our country is in a prickly condition, and it becomes every man to come to its (care). …” Furse is dead of one of the many diseases that are a curse of camp life. It is the late fall of 1862 when Colonel Robert E. Lee, on assignment to establish defenses along the Southern coast, visits the home of Mrs. George C. Mackey, near Pocotaligo. This locale is again described as one ready for attack: “As fortification, the Coosawhatchie River was blocked with heavy timbers, and guns were mounted along Bees Creek and adjoining streams. Local action began in May, 1862. A Federal force came up Broad River from Port Royal Sound and landed at Mackey’s Point. Then they proceeded along the road to Pocotaligo, hoping to destroy the then- new Charleston and Savannah railway track. A small force of 110 Confederates managed to stop them by encirclement at the Tullifinney River bridge…,” records Grace Fox Perry. Pocotaligo is no more the village it was during the Civil War years. In fact, very little is found to show where once- upon-a-time Camp Martin’s fires lit the darkness, and where, during one of America’s saddest eras, a young chaplain, in that firelight, wrote to “My dearest wife.” It is well worth a day trip to see this church and do this cache some weekend.

GCJRGE “The Missing Buoy”, was another virtual cache we did that had kind of a fascinating story behind it. This buoy, on or about April 20, 1970, broke free from its moorings in Port Royal, SC, and traveled 6000 miles to Scotland. One year and one day later it was observed off the coast of Scotland and towed to port by a British ship. The buoy was returned to Charleston late in 1973 at a cost of $92.01 and then returned to Port Royal. In June 1992, the buoy was placed in the F.O.P. Memorial Park, where its light is kept burning in commemoration of all fallen police officers in the United States.

The next day we drove outside of Beaufort, SC to St. Helena Island to see another old ruins, which was called The Chapel of Ease which has some interesting history, although there was no cache there, it was supposedly haunted. The story that is told that during the Colonial period, chapels of ease were constructed by rice and cotton planters as houses of worship because their plantations were located so far from the churches in Beaufort. This tabby walled church was constructed between 1742 and 1747 for the planters of St. Helena Island.

A forest fire destroyed most of it in 1886. All that remain today are its tabby ruins and an adjacent cemetery. This ruin is significant as a relatively intact example of mid-eighteenth century tabby construction and for its association with the St. Helena Parish, both as a secondary and primary place of worship for inhabitants of the parish. This tabby church was built ca.1740 as a chapel of ease, to serve planters in St. Helena Parish who did live a great distance from the parish church in Beaufort and could not regularly attend services there. By 1812, the population of St. Helena Island had increased to the extent that the chapel of ease was designated a parish church. The church was virtually abandoned when the planters evacuated the island in the fall of 1861.

During the Federal occupation of St. Helena, the church was used frequently by several of the Northerners who had come to the island to educate and train the freedmen. It was also used as a sanctuary by Methodist freedmen as early as 1868, but was burned by a forest fire in February 1886 and was never repaired. Much of its historic fabric, including the church walls and much of its plaster, remains. A small cemetery adjacent to the church ruin contributes to the historic character of the property. This site was also supposed to be haunted and as the story goes when workers tried to seal up the crypt behind the church, they would find a surprise awaiting them the following morning. The bricks used to seal off the crypt somehow got put neatly in a little pile. All of their work seemed to be in vain for this happened numerous times. Other people have reported strange sensations when walking through the church’s graveyard. No such feelings for us as we walked through it.

The next day we were off to Savannah, GA and Skidaway Island State Park. The campgrounds here were lovely, with huge sites so you weren’t right on top of the person next to you. The next morning we were off into Savannah to do a few of the great caches in the historic section of the city. The first cache was GC194GA “The Dueller’s Cache” . This cache was a multi-cache and was located in the Colonial Park Cemetery. The cemetery is also known as The Old Cemetery and The Brick Cemetery. The Colonial Park Cemetery is the second cemetery in Savannah. It was founded in 1750 and was closed for burials in 1853. It was then reopened as a park in 1896.

Many famous Revolutionary War heroes are buried in Colonial Park Cemetery. Button Gwinnett was buried in the cemetery in 1777. He is one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was also the acting governor of Georgia during the Revolutionary War. He was not on good terms with General Lachlan McIntosh, the leader of the Continental troops in Georgia. Gwinnett challenged Mclntosh to a duel. Gwinnett died three days later of a leg wound suffered in the duel. General Lachlan McIntosh died in1806 and was also buried in Colonial Park Cemetery.

The remains of Major General Nathanael Greene were laid in the Graham vault until they were reburied at Johnson Square in 1901. There were also many ordinary civilians buried in Colonial Park Cemetery. Over 700 citizens died during the Great Yellow Fever epidemic of 1820. They were all buried in Colonial Park Cemetery. Even though there are only about 600 burial markers still standing in the cemetery, over 10,000 bodies are buried there.

During the Civil War, Union troops were stationed at the cemetery because it was ideal for horses. The troops often searched for valuables among the graves. Since most of the soldiers were mischievous, they switched a number of dates on some of the tombstones. If the tampered dates are correct, then the oldest person buried there lived to be 1700!

This place has many colorful stories to tell and is the home of several hauntings. During the Civil War, when Sherman’s troops made their encampment inside the cemetery. They used the headstones for target practice, destroying many. They also defaced several markers, changing the dates or the letters on the stones. Also, when General Sherman’s troops were occupying the cemetery, they broke off or removed many of the tombstones to make room for their tents. There is graffiti written by the soldiers all over the gravestones.

The people resting here all played a part in making Savannah what it is today, a vibrant, historic, cosmopolitan city, beautiful and proud, a true treasure! One such story of a haunting goes like this. A couple was seen floating/walking in the graveyard after it was closed. The couple was decapitated and was missing their arms from the elbow down.

Enough history on the cemetery so on to the cache. The cache itself was called Duelers Cache and as the title indicates had to do with some of the duelers that had died dueling and were buried in the cemetery. First stop was probably the most famous person in residence here. His name is Button Gwinnett, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He died in a duel with General Lachlan McIntosh. He was shot in the leg and suffered for three days before dying. Mr. McIntosh is also buried in Colonial Park.

Next stop was where we paid a visit to Mrs. Grace Belcher. Her headstone is made of slate and has stood the test of time well. She died in the late 1700’s at the age of 45. Her 4 year old son died only five weeks later. Things were indeed tough back then.

On we went to the next area called “The Wall.” which is where all the markers go that nobody knows where their proper location is. There are about 200 markers that have been broken, torn up or just plain vandalized. They are standing against, cemented to, or affixed in other ways, to the outside wall of the cemetery. The wall used to go around the entire cemetery, but this is all that is left. The rest of it has been torn down over a century ago.

Now on to the Rev Jean Baptiste LeMoine family vault.The good reverend is not actually in there, but rests a little south of here in the “Catholic sector” of Colonial Park. Rev LeMoine was a refugee from the Revolution in France. Formerly Cure of Morley Le Roi and was the first Catholic priest in Savannah and died in 1794.

Then it was on to the Duelist’s Grave. Lieutenant James Wilde died defending his honor in a duel with Captain Roswell P. Johnson on January 16, 1815 on the Carolina side of the river near Savannah. Wilde was shot through the heart in a fourth exchange of fire by Johnson, referred to in the epitaph, in bitterness, “as a man who a short time before would have been friendless except for him”. The duelists were officers in the 8th Regiment U. S. Infantry. The nature of their quarrel is unknown.

Then we walked across the street to the location of the final cache which was on the old dueling grounds. It is a long skinny piece of land and is now a playground for children. Dueling was legal, but you had to buy a permit and conduct your business only here. How convenient to put it next to the cemetery. Dueling lasted from 1740 to 1877! This was a wonderful interesting cache and we enjoyed doing it very much and learned a little bit of some of Savannah’s history.

Next cache we did in Savannah was a 4 part virtual cache, GC70DA “A Tragedy of the War”. Our first stop was the The Marshall House Hotel. In 1851, businesswoman Mary Marshall, noting that Savannah was woefully in need of visitor accommodations, built the four-story Marshall House Hotel. It served as a hospital for soldiers toward the end of the Civil War. It was also home to Joel Chandler Harris, author of the famous Uncle Remus stories. The Marshall House was named as a National Historic Building on April 1, 2000.

The Hotel has its original staircases (some of the spindles and gingerbread have been recreated), original wood floors, fireplaces, brick walls, and the doors to each guest room are original as well. The Atrium was the courtyard and has been encased with a glass ceiling to give the sensation of what once was. The artifacts displayed on floors two and three were found during the renovation.

The second stop of the virtual was at The Green-Meldrim Mansion which was once the site of General Sherman’s Headquarters from Dec. 22, 1864-Feb. 1, 1865. The house is notable as one of the country’s finest examples of residential Gothic Revival architecture. Cost of the construction of the house in the 1850’s was $93,000. In 1892, it was acquired as a residence for Peter W. Meldrim, noted GA jurist and President of the American Bar Assoc. St. John’s Episcopal Church acquired the house from the Meldrim heirs for use as a parish house and rectory.

The third stop was one of the many cemeteries in Savannah where many of the Union and Confederate soldiers are buried. We had to find a statue with the following inscription on it: “Silence is golden. These soldiers from the other side are buried near me. We have become great friends over the years. I really wish that the four of us could have been buried next to them, as we were all Americans. Yes, time did pass and the wounds of our nation healed”.

Then it was on to the final cache site where there was no actual cache to find but we needed to get a name. The name was Andrew J. Schoonover and he was a Private in Company G of the 4th Iowa Infantry and following is his story. “I was born in Ohio on March 25, 1828. While I was still a child, my family moved to Iowa. In 1848, I married Jane Franks and we had 9 children between 1849 and 1865. I never saw my last child, a girl, as I was drafted in September of 1864 to serve in Lincoln’s army. They sent a group of us to Kentucky for training and then by rail to Vining’s Station, Georgia to join Gen. Sherman. The Battle of Atlanta was over and the army was preparing to march to Savannah. With little rations and equipment I walked, along with 62,000 other Union soldiers, to Savannah. This army seemed destined for success. “We were ready for a meal or a fight, and don’t seem to care which it is”, said one soldier. I fought at the battles of Griswoldsville, Ogeechee River, and the Siege of Savannah. In December our regiment entered the beautiful city of Savannah. I spent Christmas day with a group of friends from our small farming community in Iowa. We all wanted to go home. In January, our troops departed to invade South Carolina. They left me in Savannah with several others who had become sick and too weak to travel. We were placed in a field hospital that was, until Sherman arrived, a hotel (Marshall House Hotel). I was soon diagnosed with typhoid fever and died on February 24, 1865. My family was notified of my death, but they had no money after the war to have me sent home for burial. I was buried in the “Citizen’s Cemetery”, as it was called in the 1800s, next to three of my comrades. When the Union Army came back to Georgia in 1867 to remove the bodies of all deceased Union soldiers buried in southeast Georgia to the National Cemetery at Beaufort, South Carolina, somehow we were missed. My grave was soon “lost in time.” In 1999, my descendants, who were still living in Iowa, for the purpose of locating my grave, contacted a researcher in Georgia. On December 26, 1999, he located me and notified my family. What a great Christmas present for all of us! Don’t feel sorry for me. In 1909, my wife joined me in heaven and we watched, from far away, our children and their children grow old. The cache title was  “A Tragedy of War”…….how true. WOW, very sad indeed!

One cache we ran across in Savannah was a interesting concept and would be a nice one to do in MB. It was a cache find for all those heart-broken cachers who just can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to being the First to Find. The cache was GC18BCB “FTF (Epsilon)-Savannah”. It was only located on a long, long section of guardrail and was of course a magnetic key holder. What made it unique was that everyone who found the cache could claim it as a “FTF”. What you did was find the cache, sign the log, claim it as a FTF and then move it on to the next section of the guardrail and of course that would be a new location and then the next person who found it could claim it as a FTF, as it was in that new location, and they would move it on and the next person would find it and claim it as a FTF seeing as each section of guardrail would be a new location. The coords would stay as they were originally posted so it would take a little hunting because if 50 people found it, it would have been moved 50 sections of guardrail away from the original coords. I know we had to look almost 1/4 mile away before we found it. We thought it was kind of clever.

Well that’s about it from Savannah, and if anyone ever has it in their head to make a trip here these caches are well worth doing. Next month, we will continue south into the “Golden Isles” of Brunswick, Ga. We hope you have a great 10 year meeting and hello to all our friends in the Grand Strand Geocachers!

Dori & Dick
Tweety & Coach

Next morning it was on up the Trace to Tupelo, MS and our stay at Barnes Crossing Campgrounds. We have to tell you that if you ever get a chance to drive the Natchez Trace you really should do so as there is so many historic and interesting sites to see along the way. Starting at mile marker 176 to mile marker 251 we saw Bethel Mission which means “House of God” and was opened in 1822 as one 13 Choctaw mission stations, Pigeon Roost Creek which was an area that was a reminder of the millions of migrating passenger pigeons that once roosted in trees in this area as the species has been completely destroyed, Bynum Indian Mounds built by prehistoric people these mounds are between 1,800 and 2,100 years old, the Hernando DeSoto site who in 1539 set out on a long arduous journey across the Southeastern United States and crossed the animal paths that later became the Natchez Trace, Monroe Mission Station where the Chickasaw Indians first received Christianity and education in 1822, Chickasaw Council House where once stood an Indian village “Pontatock” with its council house which, in the 1820’s, became the “Capitol” of the Chickasaw nation and Black Belt where ages ago this area was under an arm of the ocean and shells and other marine organisms were deposited to form the limestone seen here. So as you can see just within a short 75 mile stretch there were so many stops that we didn’t even get to do any caching till the next day.

Next morning we were up bright and early to hit the caching trails again. Our first cache was GC8F1D “Twentymile Bottom” which was a virtual cache. Twentymile Bottom, now cultivated, was typical of the many low areas along streams through which the Natchez Trace passed. In 1812 Reverend John Johnson stopped at Old Factors Stand, near this bottom, and wrote this account of bottomland travel: “I have this day swam my horse 5 times, bridged 1 creek, forded several others, besides the swamp we had to wade through. At night we had a shower of rain I took up my usual lodging on the ground in company of several Indians”. We got the answers to the 3 questions and we were on our way to the next cache.

GC10PF2 “Chickasaw Village Site” which was located on the Trace at mile marker 261. It was just a simple traditional cache but it was on
the land of the Chickasaw Nation tribe, population about 2000, who lived in the “Chickasaw Old Fields” a small natural prairie near Tupelo, MS. Although their villages occupied an area of less than 20 square miles, the Chickasaw claimed, and hunted over, a vast region in northern Mississippi and Alabama and western Tennessee and Kentucky. The Chickasaw were closely related to the Choctaw, Creek, and Natchez Indian tribes as well as some of the smaller tribes of the Mississippi Valley.

GC11DJC “Old Town” which was a multi cache along a nature trail located on the land where the Battle of Ackia was fought. This consisted of two pitched battles by the French and allies against Chickasaw fortified villages in present day Northeast Mississippi. This land was also the site of the Treaty of Pontotoc in 1832. This treaty was originally set forth in the article dealing with the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830. The treaty was made on this land in 1832 between the Chickasaw Indians and General John Coffee of TN.

GCE2E5 “TP&R #1″ which was a cache put out by the Tupelo Parks and Recreation Dept near the birthplace of Elvis Presley. Elvis was born in the house we saw on this site which was built by his father. We saw his house, a chapel that was built in remembrance of him, a bronze statue of him at age 13 a car which was like the one his family owned and a story board on which many friends had written things about him. An interesting fact was that in 1936 the Tupelo Tornado, the fourth deadliest tornado in United States history, slammed into Tupelo, MS at around 8:30 P.M. It was an F5 on the Fujita scale, causing total destruction along its path. The death toll was 216 and a very young Elvis Presley and his mother were two of the survivors.

We left Tupelo this morning and traveled up the Trace to a cache GC8F1A “Donovan’s Slough” a virtual cache where you needed to answer 3 questions along a woodland trail which takes you through a lowland where rich soil and abundant moisture support a variety of large water tolerant trees including tulip poplar, sycamore and water oak. Bald cypress thrive in the swampy backwaters of a slough or channel while winding through the bottomland. A 20 minute walk lets you see these trees and the dramatic way the bald cypress grow only in the wet slough. Then it was on to mile marker 286.7 and Pharr Mounds. It is the largest and most important archeological site in Northern Mississippi. Eight large dome-shaped burial mounds are scattered over an area of 90 acres (100 football fields). These mounds were built and used about 1-200 AD by a tribe of nomadic Indian hunters and gatherers who returned to this site at times to bury the dead with their possessions. Then we stopped at mile marker 308 and GC18V7J “Sunken Cave” an Earthcache located at Cave Spring. Cave Spring is an existing attraction along the Natchez Trace Parkway in northeast Mississippi. It is a feature that is a combination of a cave and sink hole. Originally, it existed as a cave in the form of a large room/corridor just under the surface. At one point, the roof of the room weakened and collapsed. The result is what you see today, which are two openings to caves that border the sink hole feature in the middle.

Then it was on to Meriwether Lewis Campground for our overnight stay which is a campground and historical site at mile marker 385 out in the middle of nowhere. Meriwether Lewis (August 18, 1774-October 11, 1809) was an American explorer, soldier, and public administrator, best known for his role as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition also known as the Corps of Discovery, with William Clark, whose mission was to explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis died under mysterious circumstances of two gunshot wounds in 1809 at a tavern called Grinder’s Stand, about 70 miles from Nashville, Tennessee, on the Natchez Trace, while in route to Washington to answer complaints about his actions as governor. Whether Lewis committed suicide or was murdered remains a mystery to this day.

Next time, we will continue our trip up the Trace and arrive in Goodlettsville, TN. So until next month, we wish all our friends in Grand Strand Geocachers HAPPY CACHING!

Tweety & Coach
Dori & Dick

This month we’ll be meeting for some great sandwiches and general camaraderie at our first meeting of the year, catching up with TWEETY & COACH ON THE ROAD as they cache their way through Mississippi, and catch up on all of the new caches for the past couple of months on the FTF list!

Happy Caching!

As always, if you have a news item, event, or article idea for the newsletter, please contact Marvin J & Zephyr!

Ham it up with us! Or Turkey, or Roast Beef…

Join the Grand Strand Geocachers at this event to be held in the ‘Train Room’ at Dagwood’s Deli! The event will be held from 1:00pm-4:00pm, on Saturday February 13th, 2010.

Bring your appetite and get together for swapping stories, tradables and general camaraderie! Lunch purchase is not required to attend, but gosh darn it’s good.

MEETING DETAILS
Who: Grand Strand Geocachers
What: Event Cache Meeting
Where: Dagwood’s Deli (N 33 41.700 W 078 52.769)
When: 1- 4 p.m.
To sign up, visit GC23E16

This month we’ll be meeting for some bowling fun, catching up with Tweety & Coach as they cache their way through Mississippi, and checking out pictures from the Nature-ly Fit Day!

Happy Caching!

As always, if you have a news item, event, or article idea for the newsletter, please contact Marvin J & Zephyr!

GRAND STRAND GEOCACHERS BOWLING NIGHT

Let’s end a hard day of caching at the Surfside Bowling Center at 7 p.m. on Saturday, November 14, 2009. Arrangements have been made with the bowling center to block off a few lanes at a special price- two hours of bowling (including shoe rental), two slices of pizza, and a soft drink for only $13.00. The only catch is at least 12 people have to be signed up to participate- so if you haven’t signed up yet, go to the cache page and sign up!

During the course of the evening, FTF Awards will be passed out, as well as the election or appointment of a new steering committee member to the South Carolina Geocachers Association. If you aren’t in attendance, you could get elected without even knowing it!

If you know of a local geocacher who you think would do a great job as our representative, please e-mail your nomination to preacherspal@sc.rr.com.

See you there!

MEETING DETAILS
Surfside Bowling Center
7 p.m., Saturday, November 14, 2009
To sign up, visit GC20FY7

To read the latest adventures of Tweety & Coach, click on the link below:
ON THE ROAD WITH TWEETY & COACH

Catch up on all 4 new caches this past month with October’s FTF list.

To see pictures from the Nature-ly Fit Day, click thumbnails below:

[View with PicLens]

We are still staying in the Springridge RV Park along our way to the Natchez Trace Parkway to Nashville, TN. Today, we are visiting the Vicksburg National Military Park to do a virtual cache and drive the 16 mile tour and stop and see as many of the 1340 monuments as we can. The virtual cache we are doing is GCG107 “Vicksburg National Military Park”. It is a four step cache where you visit 4 sets of coordinates and gather information from the plaques or monuments to email to the cache owner the answers to his questions.

After we finished the cache we visited the USS Cairo Museum which was fantastic to see. The USS Cairo is an old Union ironclad warship that was the first armored warship to be sunk by an electronically detonated mine.  On December 12, 1862, on the Yazoo River, a Confederate torpedo tore open Cairo’s bow. The Union gunboat sank in 12 minutes. The torpedo that sank the Cairo was a crude apparatus. Lt. Commander Selfridge may have been less than cautious in waters known to contain torpedoes because so many of the Confederates weapons had been duds. Two Confederate sailors, Acting Masters Zedekiah McDaniel and Francis M. Ewing had charge of placing the torpedoes. Volunteers, whose names are lost to history, hid behind the river bank and detonated the explosive with an electric charge. It was very interesting to see how they had restored the Cairo, which had been sitting on the bottom of the Yazoo River for over 100 years.

We also visited the Vicksburg National Cemetery which encompasses 117.85 acres, and includes 18,000 graves. Graves of Civil War soldiers totaling 17,077, of which 12,909 are unknown. An additional 1,280 graves are occupied by soldiers who participated in the Indian Wars, Spanish-American War, World Wars 1 and 2, and the Korean Conflict.

Our next cache was kind of a cute cache entitled GC1524D “Cache Something Fishy TB Hotel”. The story of this cache is an interesting story. It was a tribute to the cache owner’s father, a different type of fisherman- a “hand grabber”. The swing set in the front yard of the cache owner’s home wasn’t just for swinging; it was used to hang giant 100 pound catfish to be skinned after being caught by hand. Fried catfish is about as Southern as you can get, especially in Mississippi, and catching these huge fish by hand was quite common in this area.

Next cache was GCH32G “Soldier’s Rest”, located in Cedar Hill Cemetery. The City of Vicksburg served as a major hospital center in the early years of the Civil War. A section in this cemetery was set aside to provide a fitting burial place for Confederate soldiers who died of sickness or wounds. Known as the “Soldiers Rest”, the plot is the final resting place for an estimated 5,000 Confederate soldiers. As most of these men did not meet the criteria established by Congress for burial in the national cemetery, their remains were not moved and still rest today in Cedar Hill Cemetery.

The next day we drove into Jackson, MS to do some caches. When we printed the cache pages, it was recommended that these caches be done during the day, which to us seemed a little unusual, at least until we got to the cache locations. There were 4 or 5 caches that were in one of the dirtiest run down slum sections of Jackson. We proceeded to find the caches during the daytime, but now that we look back, all but one of the caches has been archived. The only interesting cache we did was GC12Y56 “Winter’s Woods”, where a Civil War action had occurred on May 14, 1863, and from July 9-17, 1863. The battle of Jackson was part of the Vicksburg Campaign in the American Civil War. Union commander Major General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Tennessee defeated Confederate General Joseph E. Johnson, seizing the city, cutting supply lines, and opening the path to the west and the Siege of Vicksburg.

The last cache we are going to tell you about this month is GCHZBB “Tour Vicksburg”, a 6 stop multi cache that took us on a trip around the city. Stage 1 of the cache was at Planters’ Hall, Circa 1834, which housed the Vicksburg branch of the Planters’ Bank of Mississippi until 1842, as well as the officers of the 28th Louisiana Regiment during the Vicksburg Siege.

Stage 2 took us to the Old Courthouse Museum, circa 1858, which was originally built to house the court house in Vicksburg. It was built on the highest hill in the city by 100 highly skilled slave artisans and was finished in 1860 at a cost of $100,000. Its past guests have included Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Booker T. Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, and William McKinley. During the Civil War, it was the target of much shelling from the Union Army, but received only one major hit. In 1953, it was hit by a tornado and fell into disrepair and was neglected. In 1947, restoration was started and after it had been finished it opened as a museum.

Stage 3 was at Pemberton Headquarters (Willis-Cowan House), circa 1835. It was the headquarters of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton, who commanded the Confederate forces during the siege of Vicksburg, and on July 3, 1863, the decision was made here to surrender the city.

Stage 4 was at a group of Italianate townhouses, circa 1872, that were owned by some of Vicksburg founding fathers, and one was even owned by Jefferson Davis’s niece.

Stage 5 was located in the downtown area close to the 1953 Tornado Museum. On December 4, 1953, the day started out normal and the downtown area was all decorated for Christmas. At 5:35 PM, a tornado wind roared through downtown and destroyed everything in its path. The aftermath was unbelievable, motorists were killed as they drove through the streets, debris buried victims, phone and power lines were down and the Saturday matinee ended early with a massive roof collapse on children. The toll was 38 dead, 200 injured, and 1200 left homeless.

Then it was off to Stage 6, the final stage, which was located down the street in a small park which we walked to and found the final cache container easily under a set of stairs.

After we found this cache we walked around the downtown area looking at the historic and interesting places we didn’t see on our first trip through downtown. We saw a historic marker dedicated to Tobias Gibson, the Father to Methodism in MS. He was sent to Vicksburg in 1799, as a missionary and he founded many of the early churches there.

We also saw the Vicksburg Waterfront Murals, 25 murals all hand painted on the side of the flood wall in the downtown area separating the Mississippi River and Vicksburg. The murals all painted by Robert Dafford capture the past, present and future of Vicksburg and its role in American history.

Well that’s it for this month! We hope everyone is well, and we are looking forward to seeing everyone at the bowling meeting this Saturday! Also, don’t forget to sign up for Christmas Bash 2009 on December 12th at 2:00 PM at Logan’s Roadhouse.

‘Til then Happy Caching!

Tweety & Coach……….ftjak
Dori & Dick

Location: Huntington Beach State Park; N 33° 30.131 W 079° 03.940
Date: Saturday, October 17th, 2009
Time: 11:00am-1:00pm

Description: Join us Saturday, October 17th to teach the muggles what Geocaching is all about!!! More involved muggles means less stealth (ok, it won’t help THAT much but its a start) and more potential geocachers to hide stuff! First program starts at 11:00am!

We’ve been asked by Huntington Beach State Park to participate in their second annual Nature-ly Fit event. We will be setting up at the picnic shelter just North of Atalaya.

We will set up some ‘unofficial’ caches that are nearby and populate our GPS units with these coordinates to give people the experience of finding real caches. We may try for some of the official caches on the park, but they are a bit distant and each event only runs 50 minutes total.

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a free event. Park admission (or use of a State Park Passport) will be required to come join. We have gotten clearance from the park staff to have up to 4 other people (Cache and Dash SC is heading this up) to help staff the event. These people will be given free admission for that day, but should expect to be at the shelter 15 minutes before the program. If you should choose to assist in this event, we ask that you bring your GPS to the event. No GPS units will be loaned out without a cacher going along as a security measure…

Programs will run for 50 minutes starting at at 11:00am, 12:00pm and 1:00pm. If up to 4 others want to sign up to help staff the event, please note that in your attendance post and which time(s) you want to help with. I could use your help before hand helping to set up the ‘dummy’ caches too.

Hope to hear from y’all soon!
Cache & Dash SC