AAR: Middle of Everywhere GeoTour

The Middle of Everywhere GeoTour kicked off on May 3, 2025, and was on my list of tings to do while in West Virginia for GeoWoodstock XXI. A couple of years ago (around 2022), I heard about the Marion County Murals Geocaching Trail, and had hoped to travel there to complete it. Marion County had sponsored GeoTrails in the past, but that was the first one I had heard of. The Middle of Everywhere GeoTour (MOE-GT) incorporated some of the same locations, and added more, maybe from previous GeoTrails. The caches were divided into four different categories, each being a specific cache type, and at least four caches out of each category had to be found in order to be eligible for the geocoin. Finding all twenty would give you the souvenir.
After attending GeoWoodstock through lunch, we left Mylan Park and headed south, hoping to find the required 16 out of 20 caches needed to earn the geocoin. We heard from multiple sources that it would take eight to ten hours, so we were on a time crunch. The last chance to hand in our passport was at the Farewell from the Fort event, but we were leaving the area after the Breakfast with the Mommas event, so there was very little time available the next morning. I'd done a lot of research prior to departing for West Virginia, so I had an idea of where some of the caches were and how to solve some of the puzzles. This helped to speed the process along. Either way, if other cachers were present when we arrived, and the container was already open, we'd wait until we had a chance to open it ourselves. If I had gatherd information on-line before the trip, I made sure to find it while I was on-site. We really enjoyed the variety of caches and methods of getting into the containers. By the end of the evening, we had 15 of the 16 needed for the geocoin, and were able to grab two more MOE-GT caches the next morning before breakfast.
At breakfast, turning in our passport was easy. The cache owner and an associate were present, sitting on a picnic table with a box full of coins, and were aware of difficulties experienced by many cachers with one of the letterbox caches (three of the stamps we encountered were broken, but one didn't even have the rubber part of the stamp left behind in the cache). They were aware of that, and still gave me credit - and the geocoin!
Some of my favorite experiences from the GeoWoodstock weekend came from this GeoTour. From learning about the Number Nine mining disaster and the Home of the Pepperoni Roll, to fun At the Falls and finding a key for a lock, this was a well-rounded, fun and informative GeoTour. Well done!