Pocahontas CVB Geo Cache Winner No Stranger To The Geographic Treasure Hunts

Marlinton, WV – Travis Burris is a heavy equipment mechanic who works in Huntington, WV. But despite a fairly long drive, he made the trek to Pocahontas County this past Monday night for the first official Natures Mountain Playground geo cache challenge.

“I emailed them to see if the coordinates were going to post; I seen [sic] it on their website that they were going to have a challenge and I wasn’t for sure if they were going to post or not, because I was going to take off work,” says Burris. “But they ended up coming out that evening after work so I decided to just go ahead and head up.”

He’s no stranger to geo caching, having been involved in the sport since 2009.

“I did the explore West Virginia when that came out, and I did a few of the Main Street challenges,” he says. “I’ve done an Athens County, Ohio trail they had, but that’s actually probably the third one I’ve completed. I like the challenge of it a lot, pretty cool idea, get people out.”

Burris arrived in Pocahontas about 10pm Monday night to begin his search. And he did run into some of the rain storms that swept through the county that night.

“One or two o’clock probably in the morning I got into that a little bit there, got a little wet, I guess,” he says. “But I mean I was already there so I didn’t want to give up on it just because of the rain.”

He says he really enjoyed this challenge and learned a thing or two about Pocahontas County.

“I just like also the West Virginia stuff because you can learn places you can probably read about in a magazine, but you don’t see them, and you actually get to experience them better,” he says. “But it was one of the better ones because all the places were pretty cool places to go visit. I’ve never been to the Droop Mountain and like the Pearl S. Buck, and I learned about Calvin Price; I’d never even heard of him til now, so that’s pretty cool.”

And like other geo cachers, he’s glad he was one of the first 50 to solve the puzzle and get the coveted geo cache coin.

“Yeah I guess that’s a big thing, the geo coins and stuff,” he says. “But it’s pretty neat just to add to your collection; just to say that you completed it. And it get you out away from the normal place where you live at, takes you different places.”

“Stuff like this, I think it’s going to get bigger, a bigger sport and it’ll bring more people maybe into the state and stuff to see what’s going on and everything.”

And of course because he was the first one he also got an additional prize because he was the first one to solve the puzzle, a Presidio Studios compass. Burris says he hopes to return to Pocahontas County soon, but next time it’ll be in daylight.