Tom and I started our Delaware County Scavenger Hunt on one of the warmer days in January.  We wanted to get out and do something, see someplace new, anything different.  So starting the scavenger hunt was a good project for us.  We had the whole afternoon so we headed to the townships farthest away from us.

We started in the southwest corner of the county with Concord Township.  The destination there was the O’Shaughnessy Nature Preserve, Area S.  We took a walk along the shores of the Twin Lakes and enjoyed watching the ducks and geese on the water.  We collected our clue and added it to the secret phrase.

Next we headed north to Scioto Township, bordered to the east by the Scioto River.  We found the Township park and walked along the perimeter trail to find our clue.  The trail had large rocks engraved and placed at intervals along it to tell the history of the township.  We found the rock we needed but had some problems with this clue.  Here is the clue, “the engraving for the first number listed.”  Tom and I debated this a lot.  Did we want the 18 in “eighteen hundreds” or did we want the 3 in “#36”?  I argued that we wanted the 3 because the other wasn’t a number – it was words.  We had to use the corresponding letter of the alphabet.  It turned out we wanted the 18 because the letter c didn’t fit in our word.  Another clue collected.

We continued north to Thompson Township where we found the old Thompson Township Hall.  Buildings of this size and age used to be Township halls all over Ohio.  Today most of the townships have newer buildings.  We needed a letter from the street sign across from the hall.  While we were stopped at the hall we saw a beautiful sunbow across the field.

In Radnor Township we had to find the Radnor Heritage Museum in the village of Radnor.  Calling it a village is being generous.  It was a crossroads with a few houses.  The Radnor Heritage Museum looked like an old building that had a bunch of antiques thrown in it in no particular order.  I looked in through the windows, but the building was closed and looked like it would always be closed.  The clue we wanted was on the outside of the building so we collected it and continued on our way.

Next we headed to Marlboro Township where we had to find the Marlboro church and cemetery.  Only the church and cemetery are not in Marlboro Township.  When the Delaware Lake was constructed in the 1940’s, the cemetery and church were both moved to Troy Township.  We found them and gathered our clue, enjoying the old tombstones next to the primitive Baptist church.

Our final stop for the afternoon was the small town of Ashley in Oxford Township.  We had to use a letter engraved on the front of the library for our clue.  The library was easy to find and the word was easy to see.

_ _ v e _   _ _ o p   _ _ p _ _ r i n _!

With eight out of 18 townships done, we were almost halfway finished with the scavenger hunt.  Of course, we couldn’t resist trying to decipher the secret phrase.  Can you tell what it is?