Visit to Nashville

When the Titans moved to Tennessee, it will suited me since I have been a Houston Oilers fan since the 1970's. I have managed to see a few games from time to time. On September 10, my sister-in-law called me and asked if I wanted tickets for the Titans-Packers preseason game which was that night. I told her yes and made arrangements to pick up the tickets.

Unable to find anyone who wanted to make the trip on such short notice and during the work week, but when I got home I showed my daughter, Kailee the tickets and she got ready quickly for the 2 1/2 hour trip to Nashville.

Since I had taken up geocaching, I have rarely not made an effort to select some caches to go after. On game day I had no time and really didn't want to fool around carrying a $500 GPS to the football game and explain to security why it's in my possession. We parked on 3rd Avenue and began walking towards the stadium. Showed Kailee some of the tourist sights along 2nd Avenue to include the Hard Rock Cafe. We walked to the river and turned towards bridge that would take use across the Cumberland River and ran across Fort Nashborough, a replica of the first fort in Nashville to guard against Indian attack. I knew of the Battle of the Bluff virtual but didn't have the cache information. I took mental notes of everything and looked around the fort. I had visited this fort during a high school trip to Nashville. The following day, I looked at the cache page and had the information required to log the find.

Was a good day, logged a find, increased my cache to cache miles and saw the Titans defeat the Packers.

My Glob grows

My recent cache run into Missouri during the Labor Day weekend netted another county, Dunklin to my overall glob of 116 counties. A glob is where I have found geocaches and colored in the county using the itsnotaboutthenumbers stat website. With Dunklin County, I have colored in the boot heel of Missouri and made my first visit to that county.

Thunderbolt of the Confederacy

I have been an avid Civil War buff since grade school and have studied the stories, tactics and movements of such leaders as: Generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, William Sherman and most notably Nathan Bedford Forrest. Gen. Forrest caught my attention since his forces operated near my hometown in 1862 and 1864. Of late, my geocaching has taken me to another charismatic leader, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan. In 2007 while attending a NCO school at Ft. Knox, KY a beginning geocacher went with me and we found two caches on the north side of the Ohio River in Indiana. The caches were in reference to where Gen. Morgan crossed the Ohio River on a long raid of Kentucky, Indiana and captured in Ohio. At the time there were 24 caches on this 1,000 mile raid. We found Morgan's Raid Part 01 of 24 and Morgan Raid Part 02 of 24. I didn't realize until we were reading the markers that we were at a location of such historical significance.

Working more on the Tennessee County Challenge I have run across more geocaches in reference to the "Thunderbolt of the Confederacy". The most interesting was Battle of Hartville Remembered where Confederate force outnumbered but with the element of surprise defeated a Union unit. A neat monument (pictured above) is located in the cemetery along with Confederate dead from the battle. Also found December 7, 1862 a geocache that took me onto the battlefield.

Later in the Nashville area, I stopped to visit a friend of mine in Gallatin, TN whom retired from the National Guard. I had time to kill and had to be at the airport in Nashville at midnight to pick up my daughter who visited the Grand Canyon. We went geocaching in his home town and we found A Circle with Corners. I marveled at the sight in the cemetery, a Confederate garden and when I saw the units the men were assigned too, I commented to my friend, "These were Morgan's men".

I hope that I work more on the Tennessee County Challenge I run across interesting locations as ones I just described.