I worked during the day today, so no morning cache for me. That is OK though. I put in my time 7am til 3pm.. When I got out of work I was ready to go. Novalee is still sick, and cranky. Niki and Takoda stayed home with her. David was ready and rearing to go. It is raining. No big deal. It has been wet a lot lately.. I sure am glad that I have taken as many pictures as I have this fall because I don't think there will be much foliage to enjoy when the skies clear. David and I hop into the car. We decided to do an AGT cache called Cookies Canyon. I have wanted to do this cache for a while now. The cache description promises a very nice view. I fire up the gps. The cache is about 4 miles away. It looks like there is a road we take off rte 321. It is forest road, a right just before Red-bridge. David is driving. We are listening to the radio. Our conversation dies down as a warning broad cast informs us that Western McKean county will be under a state of alert for flash flooding and heavy rains until 6:30 pm. I file the information away in my head, I wonder are we in the Western half of McKean county or the eastern half. It does not seem to be raining to hard right now so we keep going. Eventually we got to our right turn. The road we turn onto is a well maintained oil well access type of road. These one lane dirt roads run all through the Allegheny National Forest. This one we soon find out winds up and around a mountain at a good grade. I am nervous. David can see this. We begin to talk of a similar experience only we were driving down MT Washington. That was worse and knowing I had been through worse some how made this not so bad. I still did not much care for the road or the route, and the weather. Especially considering that the radio had warned us of heavy rains and flash flooding. “I bet it would not take much to wash out this road.:”I was saying. Dave told me, “If you really don't like the way the road drops off, then you should not keep looking down.” I took his advice and it did get easier. We drove a bit and the cache got closer and then far away as we looped the mountain. Then closer again. Then even closer. At one point we were .2 of a mile away. Then the cache distance began to grow as we look for a good place to park. We drive by a likely spot. Find a save place where we will not fall off a cliff or get stuck to turn the car around. Then we drive back to our parking place. We end up parking next to a green oil pump station. We are .3 of a mile away from the cache. We look at the gps. Look at my compass. Look a path that looks like it goes away from our cache direction. We bush whack into the woods. I stumble over brush and leaves and almost fall on my face a few time. Our bush whacking path opens up to join the path we had spurned moments ago. Seems as though now it angles in the direction we want to go so we follow it. This path descends at a good angle and looking ahead I can tell there will be a view. I look down at the gps and realize we are 300 feet away from the cache. 200, 100, 50, 13, and 3. I announce it, “3 feet” David lets me know he saw something moving in the brush ahead of us. I am not worried. “If we are loud it will leave us alone.” He looked at me, not quite frowning, “I hope so.” We both grew quiet as we looked for the cache. Then I heard him say it, “I found it.” I walked over to him and said, “Nice job” He passed me the ammo box. I opened it and signed the log book. He pulled out his agt passbook. “Can I have the Stamp?” he said... I looked at him and shook my head, “You know I forgot we about the book and I pulled mine out. “The stamp has Mckean Country on it, and the number 20. I happily stamped my book. We put the cache lid back in its hiding place and walked down the path we were on until we got to the view. It was magnificent. We were at level height with the mountains that surrounded us. The valley below, Was filled with greens yellows and reds. Wisps of silver clouds danced atop tress., and rivers of fog ran off, through and between the mountains. I think this is the most rewarding cache I have been on. I should have brought the camera in spite of the rain. Oh well. This little piece of paradise is not to far away. I can come back again when the weather is right and take some great pictures.
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