Soggy day

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June 7th, 2008 Saturday 81* Rain has stopped


Well we took off today in our quest for a little fun and reunion with friends. Left about 10am saturday morning headed for Terre Haute Indiana. Got to the Indiana/Ohio border and stopped at the rest area. Had a message on my cell so I check it out and it is Keith from the KOA. He says that Interstate 70 is closed at mile marker 30 in Indiana, well we need to get to marker 11. Said we were best to stay where we were. So we found a local campground "Deer Ridge Camping Resort". Seems like an old park and pretty tight but nice enough, a little pricey for a small campground at $32 a night with a $3 discount for our Good Sams club membership. Anyway it was close and we didn't want to return home. So we are sitting here till tomorrow and will attempt to move west towards St. Louis. I think we will most likely have to go north to get around Terre Haute. They apparently had a levee break and flooded the town. Several dams are in jeopardy according to the local news station. Our friends at the KOA, when I called said they had no electricity or knew when they would get it back. The town is basically isolated. Fortunately there were no deaths.

Kind of a rocky start to a 3 week long trek! :) I70 in Putnam county Indiana is washed out.

So here are a couple pictures from the current campground.

Cladmania

Salty and myself


April 27th, 2008 Sunday 63*

Meet up with a couple of friends in Columbus this morning for a metal detecting hunt. Bill who was at the hunt we went too week or so ago and Dave (salty dog) who lives in Columbus. Dave was kind enough to share a couple of his spots with Bill and myself! It was a great day and a couple of firsts for me. I found my first Kennedy half dollar and in the same hole was 2 Sacagewa Dollar coins, there was a 3rd dollar coin just 8 inches away that I missed somehow, Bill found it! I found a total of 4 dollar coins in one day. Last year I only found 3 all year long. My take for the day was $22.48 and between the 3 of us over $48 for the day!

My luck is incredible!

April 29th, 2008 Tuesday 43*

Well I found out today I won a contest for a White's Metal detector! I had bought some tickets to a raffle that was to support Autism and I managed to come away with a win! I really wanted to just make the donation as I never figured I would win anything but it all worked in my favor. The charity made out and I got a benefit from it. This after Deanna won a digging too at the Metal Detecting meet we went to week or so ago :)

Weather is cool right now but just a temp thing. Suppose to be back into the 70's by end of week. We are going to go visit our friends Terry and Dale in Elkhart Indiana for the weekend. We were not able to go last weekend as we had to attend a funeral.

The last trip we made with truck and rv was a good one as far as fuel mileage goes. We got almost 12 MPG which is up from our previous best of 10MPG. Hope it happens again this weekend with the price of diesel at $4.25 a gallon :(

We have a friend Mark from the rv.net forum we are on who stopped by to visit us. He has gone to Kentucky to take a couple of tours as a day trip and will be back on Wednesday. Great to see Mark again, we only get to see him once a year.

That's the quick update so you know as much as I do

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.

Spring is bouncing!

April 3rd, 2008 Thursday 47* and rainy

Just some notes to jot down for now as nothing significant has taken place.

Today I took a course on CPR thru the company I work for. Something I have always wanted to do but just never took the initiative to do so. This made it much easier. Looking back, we lost our good friend Mickey Ivey to heart attack although he was alone when it happened so in that case, it would not have mattered. Thinking that at the time had I been with him and I could have helped save his life, it would be a life changing experience. 35 years ago I had attended a time trial at the Indianapolis 500 with my dad and a friend of his. We were at the very top of the stands which is quite a trek up even for the youngster I was. While waiting for the rain to cease an elderly man and woman came up, took them a long time as they were both well winded. They sat down right in front of us. After a few minutes the woman was talking to her husband but he was not responding. Larry leaned over and said I think something is wrong with him. Sure enough he had quit breathing and his eyes rolled back in his head, Larry sprung into action and got the guy onto the ground and administered CPR till the medics got there. Unfortunately I believe the gentleman passed but the point is he would have never had that chance if Larry had not been there. A great lesson for someone to learn. I would like to think that if today someone had that happen near me I could give them that same second chance. As we all get older the more important it all becomes. Imagine if your spouse had that happen and you did not know how to help them. A thought that would never ever leave your mind. Food for thought!

Got some travel plans coming up soon. 3rd week of April we will be going to Dover Ohio to attend and participate in a Metal detecting hunt at an old Boy Scout camp dating back to the late 1800's. No prizes just the excitement of finding something old. Cheap enough to attend as it is only $15 for 3 days hunting and that includes a hog roast on Saturday. Deanna will be also hunting along with me.

I have made a friend who lives in the country of Serbia through a metal detecting forum I frequent. His name is Sasha and hunts on a regular basis. He is in the cross roads of history it seems as he often finds old Roman coins dating back to the beginning of the dating. He most recently has sent me a silver coin that dated from the date range of 177-192 AD, shortly thereafter he sent me a coin that was dating back to 100-200 BC! To think that I posses a coin that is over 2100 years old and has probably been that long since it has seen daylight is staggering. He also sent me an old roman Arrow point.

He also found a Nazi cross from WW I and attempted to send it but was not allowed due to the time period of history. Hmmmmm go figure!
















This is the BC coin front and back is the coin on left


Another coin he sent me is a Silver Polish Penny dating to 1532.







This is the 177-192 AD coin










These are some Toga pins he found, yeah they really did wear Toga's and these are some of the pins that held them up! The arrow head he sent me is in the bottom right of the picture.














As for myself, last year I found 2 Mercury dimes dating 1928 and 1942, an 18 kt gold ring and 4 sterling silver rings and some other sterling jewelry. My coin count was 2300 coins totaling $230. Quite a bit of digging but a whole lot of fun. Hopefully at the end of the year we will be visiting the desert again so I can go gold hunting.


So anywho, after that trip the following weekend we will be attending the annual Rv Rally in Elkhart that our friends Terry and Dale host, this will be the 5th year for it. Lots of our friends will be attending again.

Then in June, we will be going to a Rally in Branson Mo. and meet up with our other friends Ken and Kathy, after that we will head to Murphysboro Arkansas to spend some time digging in the Diamond fields. From there we will head to Crossville, Tennessee to check out a campground we bought a membership in. From there we will see, maybe home, maybe not! :)

September the trip will be extended as our plans currently include Gettysburg Pa, then to Scranton Pa, Famous for the song 30,000 lbs of bananas :), that will be to visit a guy for a day of metal detecting. In a way this is like a tour :), from Scranton it will be Hull Mass. to visit another MD'ing friend, then perhaps New Hampshire for the same, leaving there we are heading to Southern Ontario, Canada. Once again a lady who loves to metal detect. She lives on a river and we can camp by it. We will spends a few days there and they will give us the Canadian tour of the falls and other attractions.

So that is a catch up addition, Deanna and Major are doing fine and I am following suit. Hopefully it will all stay that way. :) Waiting for the warm weather to set in. Fuel prices we know are killing all our traveling friends. We're afraid this will slow down our possible venture back to full time traveling till the economy improves. In exchange for that we will take more longer term trips. Perhaps this December we will head west towards the desert and the coast again and spend 5 or 6 weeks. Looking forward to that!

Did someone say snow!

March 9th, 2008 Sunday 28* and sunny

Ok so it has been a while since the last update again. Xmas came and went with no real events happening. We spent the day at home enjoying the peace and quiet and just watched some movies. Same with New Years, stayed home and safe. Winter has been pretty present during the last couple of months although not much snow until yesterday. We had big snows forecast several times with nothing happening. The weather guessers were bound to get it right sooner or later. Cry wolf enough ya know! So our snow storm started on Friday around 10am, it was accompanied with pretty high winds in the 30-40 mph. During the first 15 hours of the storm there really wasn't much accumulation as the wind was blowing it all away. Now I gotta say I don't really understand that cause if it is blowing my snow away shouldn't someone else's snow be taking it's place? Anywho during the night the snow picked up and so did the wind. We had blizzard warnings issued.















Come saturday morning the wind died down and the snow began it's accumulation and it happened quite quick. We had I would say maybe 8" but he guessers said we had 13". Just south of us in Springfield they supposedly got 17". This was rated number 3 I think in worse storms we have had.

Then came 5pm and it was like a magic act, the sun came out and the snow quit! Our renter up front was busy clearing our drive and parking lot for us. A couple of times I had to go clean off the satellite dish due to accumulation of snow and interferring with the signal. It is amazing but the snow created a shelf that stuck out 18" beyond the roof line, of course in just the right spot to block our satellite. Got that all cleared away and we are now back in business!

Gary our renter usually plows a track around the building so I have a place to walk Major. Otherwise he doesn't have a clue where to poop! So that's about all there is! I am another year older so much wiser LOL!!!

I'm grilling some steaks outside so gotta get going!

Snow!

December 5th Wednesday. 21* snowy

We got our first real snow today. Accumulated about 3-4 inches. Some spots due to the wind it is much deeper. Could hardly open the back door of the shop this evening. Major was having a hayday, he loves the snow even though he has a hard time getting thru it sometimes. Warming up tomorrow and more so towards weekend and suppose to be 50* on Sunday .

I got an email from our good friend Nathan Phillips, Nate took over the business when we sold it. Nate worked there for about a year and a half and then decided to join the Army. One of the brightest kids I have ever met. Good heart and brains. Don't know why he decided to join now during a war but that is just Nate. He had been stationed in Hawaii for the last year or so. He was just home for a short leave before having to ship out to Iraq. Nate and all the other brave souls who defend our country deserve the most respect we can muster. We should all give thanks to these people every day. Nathan has a new girlfriend who now must endure the long wait for him to come home along with his loving family. Mary, his mom is trying to be supportive but obviously wants her son here. I am not anything close to a religious person but Nathan is so Godspeed to you my friend, do your job do it good, be safe and return home to us in one piece. Watch your back brother and don't take any unnecessary risks. I believe Nate is in Recon division so he will unfortunately be at risk all the time. We love you dude, hurry back and we'll take care of your Mom while your gone, don't worry about that. Keep your mind focused on the job!

With that I am closing this update, nothing can top the bravery or our friend Nate! Hopefully they will get you guys out soon. Peace out bro!

If anyone would like to send Nate a note or card please do, they need all the support they can get from home! Just put a note you're friends of Tab and Deanna

Spc Phillips, Nathan W. / Recon 1-27
2-25 SBCT
HHC 1-27 In SBCT 6260
APO AE 09378