Trouble with the Locals

[digdug]

Last week my wife and I decided to walk up river and just see what we could find. I noticed a lot of broken bottles. The pieces got bigger the further we went. Started finding a lot of Coca-Cola bottle pieces with 1915 and 1923 on them. I figured eventually we would find the source and maybe whole bottles. We made it as far as we could but ran out of riverbank to walk on. We reached a HUGE pile of trees we could not get around. Had a major flood in January and jammed the river with trees, etc. My wife noticed whole bottles hung up in the debris. I went and found a long stick to see if I could poke them out of the pile. Here is the debris pile.

 

[digdug]

As soon as I started to poke around trying to get the bottles free, we heard some noise coming from the river, evidently this local did not like us poking around with his log jam.

 

[digdug]

He got up on a log and kept walking. I have heard beavers slap the water with their tale trying to chase people away. I've not had one give me the evil eye and walk up so close to us.

 

[digdug]

We finally decided to leave. Obviously there was something in the debris he wanted to keep. Probably a pile of 1915 Coke bottles.

 

[digdug]

We were able to go upstream and find a place to get back to the river bank. I think we were getting close to the source. Here is a 1923 Coke bottle, well most of it anyway.

 

[digdug]

We ran into an area that had bottles from the 1970's back to some 1915 bottles. Nothing whole though. Once we got to the bridge the river bank turned to muck. Couldn't walk thru it. We saw some bottles hung in the debris pile that the bridge kept in place. My wife was ready to crawl across this mess, but I told her no. This is the kind of pile of stuff that your leg would fall through and twist and break an ankle or leg. The bottles were not worth that. Unbelievable how all those trees were swept down river lile they were.

 

[digdug]

I did at least get several screw on bottle caps from the 1970's. They were still attached to the bottles, and the caps were in fairly good shape. Found Diet Pepsi, Sprite, 7 Up, Nehi, RC, Canada Dry and Mello Yello caps. I needed all of those to put on some ACL's.

 

[Staunton Dan]

Do you own a metal detector? That bridge looks quite old. Back in the day when it was built, the men who built it did not go home every night and would camp out right where they were working. I'm sure that they lost a lot of personal items during the time that they worked there including coins, etc. Might be worth looking along the bank to see if anything good shows up. You just might find some bottles too.

 

[digdug]

That is a good idea. Maybe next time I can take the metal detector. But, this area is prone to flooding. I wonder how much stuff was swept downstream/washed away.

 

[T D]

great pics Doug, love the beaver. I've been in a gully for a while now, and with all this rain have found bottles down stream, and I'm talkin' a small stream. Been digging the bottom half of some rare stuff[>:]