Pirate of the Day: William Kidd

Years active: 1696-1701 Location: Indian Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and off the east coast of North America.
Fate: Hung and gibbeted over the River Thames in London, where his body remained for over twenty years as a warning to those considering piracy as a profession.
Claim to fame: Originator of the idea of “buried treasure.”
Truthfully, the exploits of the legendary Captain Kidd were not very extraordinary.  Kidd participated in several small skirmishes with pirates and other vessels as a privateer commissioned by the British government, but none would have any substantial impact on history.  The legend of Captain Kidd, interestingly enough, really begins when it ends.  Throughout his career, many of his counterparts and superiors had suspected that Kidd had gone beyond the call of his letter of marque and dabbled in piracy on occasion.  When the evidence seemed overwhelming, English men-of-war were dispatched to bring him back to London.  Knowing what was to come, Kidd purportedly buried a vast treasure off the coast of New York on Gardiners Island as an insurance policy and a bargaining tool.  Unimpressed by  tales of buried treasure, the British court ordered Kidd to the gallows.  There, with a short drop and a sudden stop, his story ended and his legend began.

Taken from AOM

Geocaching #2

A cool,cloudy day here in Maryland. No snow on the ground which was forecast for our area last night. Good thing, I'm through with the snow for the year, I'm glad the weather is starting to listen. Candy stayed home today so this was a solo hike in the deep woods of the Catoctin mountains. On this Sunday morn I was searching for two caches located in Cunningham Falls State Park Manor Area off Route 15 three miles south of Thurmont. It has the Scales and Tales Aviary, featuring a bald eagle with camping and the historic Catoctin Iron Furnace nearby. My first cache was hidden away on a hillside near the creek. When I first looked on my GPS receiver to find its location, it looked as though I had to cross the creek. So with much effort and a precarious balancing act, I did. Only to find that the creek takes a nice bend further upstream making my crossing unnecessary and doubly so as I had to recross back to my original side. Bob the Pathfinder!

Manging to keep my feet dry with my nimble athletic prowess, onward and upward I climbed,finally reaching my goal on a rocky overhang looking down on the roaring stream. My first "treasure" of the

day was a U.S. Army beret flash patch. After logging my find in the geocache logbook, I traded some swag I brought along, a neat toy that dramatically increases in size when water is added, for the unit patch. Geocaching is kid friendly, for the most part, so a lot of the "treasure" is for them,read -ME.

My treasure from the 2nd geocache find for the day,a Big Bear GeoCoin from California.

This is an example of some "adult" treasure to be found while geocaching. I will not keep this, because its purpose is to travel the world from one cache to another through the comings and goings of fellow geocachers like Candy and I. Once a geocoin is found, the finder logs on to Geocaching.com and records what is happening with the coin and also gets to see where it has travelled throughout its geocaching journey.

The next cache that we find will receive this geocoin, and add a few more miles in its travels from California.

Another day,another woodland adventure for Bob the mountain goat.