Hills of Dover

April 20th 2008, Friday Sunny 75*

Well we are in Dover Ohio at an old Boy Scout camp called Tuscazoar. There is a Metal detecting hunt here on the grounds this weekend with a group from a forum called dfxonly.com It is a website where users of Whites DFX model detectors congregate to share stories and information. The hunt starts on Friday and runs thru Sunday. We actually arrived here on Thursday night and are dry camping in the parking lot along with another couple from Tennessee Andy and Robin. They are also camping in their RV just over from us. A couple of my other friends are also here Bill and Mary Jo of Lebanon and Paul from Chicago. They are friends I have made from one of the forums.














So Thursday night I cook them all burgers including the caretaker of the camp Dan Gier. We had some chips and salsa along with some cubbed cheese. I managed not to make anyone sick so I guess that was progress :) . We sat around and just visited till late evening.

Friday morning, Mary Jo, Robin and Deanna are going shopping in the Amish stores while the guys all go in search of treasures. First day was fun and everyone is scurrying around looking for the best place to hunt. This place is 500 acres and there are about 70 people here to hunt it. It's really warm today but feels very good after a long winter of cold and snow. We are lucky as 4 weeks earlier this area was under water from rains. The Tuscawara river is at the bottom of the camp and the Dam is just a few hunderd yards away. We hunted till about 2pm till we broke for lunch, Andy and Bill have disappeared into the lower section of the camp and Paul and I were staying up top trying to clean out a local lodge yard. Everyones goal here is to locate silver coins. Unfortunately myself, Bill and Paul got skunked the entire weekend but Andy managed a Mercury dime and a Washington Quarter.
My take for the day is about $3 in change a toy truck, a scout necktie slide and some other miscellaneous finds. My best find for the day started out being what was thought to be a Maple tree syrup tap. It turns out to be a civil war era tent rope tensioner. They sell for about $25 a piece on the internet. That turned out to be my best and oldest find of the weekend! Andy found 2 of them.














Saturday we decided we should try to hit the oldest spot at the camp although it turns out it is too late as it has been plucked pretty clean. The view was fantastic though as you overlook the valley and river. We spent all day combing the sides of the hills in anticipation of finding that elusive silver, it was not to be and was actually the worse day of the weekend! I found 3 Lincoln pennies and some other junk metal and pop caps. We covered a lot of ground today and the girls were with us and like troopers kept right up! :) We came across what used to be the old swimming hole, let me tell ya, it was pretty scary to see it. This was nothing more than they blocked up the end of the ravine to allow it to flood. It could flood quite deep also. It was evident that just the month before it was probably flooded 30-40 feet deep. That's the difference between then and now, today that would never be accepted as a safe place to swim.

There was also a Pig roast for lunch on Saturday afternoon, that was part of the $15 fee :) it was really good, shreaded pig, coleslaw, beans (YUK) cookies and a drink! Tasted great. They also gave away some door prizes which Deanna won one of them! That was cool as the prize was a $40 hole plugger. Bill and Andy also won prizes. Only one in our group who did not was Paul, just his luck as he took all the names up and put them in the hat :)

Paul and Bill were planning on leaving on Sunday Morning. Paul has a long drive back and is having transmission fluid leaking. So Andy and I head across the road to the other part of the camp that was off limits yesterday due to being used by the scouts. Unfortunately there were a few who don't pay attention to rules and went over on Friday and Saturday. They pulled a lot of silver coins from there. I ended up finding a scout merit badge and 3 tokens from a medieval gathering that happens there. Another $3 in change or so. Bill had called and when he heard that Andy had found a silver Quarter here he promptly decided he should hunt for a while also. Unfortunately he did not find any. Him and Mary Jo took off early afternoon. Andy and I decided to continue hunting and picked up some more usual junk.















Total weekend was a blast, we made great new friends with Andy and Robin and we got to eat out every nite and have ice cream, what more could you ask for! I used my GPS to track our travels and it reported that we walked nearly 15 miles up and down these hills, which are probably 200-300 ' hills that are meant for Billygoats! We thought we would go ahead and spend the night there as it was getting late before we finished hunting. So monday is when we got home.

All toll in the group of hunters, almost 100 silver coins were found and the oldest being a 1848 Half dime I believe. Our new friends will be meeting us in Arkansas for our trip to the Diamond fields. Will be great to see Andy and Robin again.