Highway of Death

During much of the 1991 Gulf War from January 17 to February 28, I was regulated to operate the wrecker. Most every night, we went out and retrieved trucks down due to mechanical problems. Each day we listened to Armed Forces Radio and CNN to find out the latest on the war. At night we could on occasion see flashes from bombing or artillery.

The ground offensive began in late February and my company supported the 1st Infantry Division and delivered over 13 million gallons of fuel for the division. 13 million gallons may seem a lot, but take in mind the M-1 Abrams main battle tanks consumes five gallons of fuel per mile. I was near the border when the ground offensive was unleashed, that afternoon, I was underneath a truck hooking it up to the wrecker and could feel the tremors in the ground from the artillery and bombing. Three days later, the ground offensive ended. When we heard the news of the cease-fire, we had just left our camp area and were heading north, only to turn around and make up the camp again.

Our three truck platoons were in northern Kuwait and I joined them in early March. On the way, we drove around Kuwait City and saw much of the bombed out roads and bridges. North of Kuwait on Highway 80 on the way to Safwan, Iraq, I saw images that would last me a life time. I did drive through and walk around the legendary "Highway of Death". Saw a few deceased Iraqi soldiers but hundreds of not a few thousand vehicles from cars, truck, tanks, APC and Anti-Aircraft guns. The place was a mess that is hard to comprehend unless one actually sees if for him/herself.

Coon Skin, the forgotten cache

Coon Skin is located at the TWRA land around Davy Crockett Lake just outside of Humboldt, Tennessee. I begun caching in Feb. of 2005 and was determined that I would find that cache in time. Summer came upon me in 2005 and after some problems with wooded area caches while using a Garmin Legend, I decided to wait for Coon Skin when the weather was cooler and the leaves were down. The early logs of this cache did worry me some.

One Saturday morning on November 19, 2006, I took cachestalker94 to a Girl Scout function and cannotreadgps was doing something else that day, thus I had Minnie Mouse, then age 4, to do some caching. Coon Skin was one of the last caches within 40 miles of my home and off we went.

When we arrived, there some wind off the lake and we wasted little time finding the trail. Turned out, the trail was very clear, unlike what early logs had mentioned. We had an easy time getting to the cache and find it. By that time, four year old Minnie Mouse had about enough and we walked (more like I carried Minnie Mouse) back to the truck where she soon fell asleep.

It's a shame for such a great cache to receive virtually no attention, this is a rewarding cache and should be on the lists of many cachers.

Earthcaches

After finding the earthcaching site, I began to look more into earthcaching. I had found my first earthcache at Pinson Mounds by BigDaddyD on April 19, 2005. I enjoyed the hike up to the platform and having my picture taken. I had been to the museum a few years ago, but that day, I took in the history while at the mound. Later that summer, I found Phosphate is too Large. I learned about the mining industry in the Columbia area. I recently began to find more earthcaches in Middle Tennessee and LBL of Kentucky and seeing a fault line in Nashville, called It's the Cumberland's Fault

In the last few months, earthcaches have taken off, Earthquake Lake was the second earthcache placed in West Tennessee, the third being The Hollow Rock in Hollow Rock, TN. Recently more eartcaches have been placed in West Tennessee and Western Kentucky.

Currently, I have no plans to set up more earthcaches since I have set up enough earthcaches to receive the Platinum Award from geosociety. When I first saw the geosociety site, I didn't figure there would be anywhere to place earthcaches in West Tennessee since there are very few rock formations around. However, with more research, there are many areas for earthcaches in the region, to include river confluences, mining areas, mineral deposits and the historic New Madrid fault line.