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On a final trip to lands north, we seek Lilly Bird, placed by Cache Owner chagesfeld.

Passing through Tremont, A Christmas Story house crosses our geotrail. Movie fans line up for pictures and tour the back yard. Here a newborn babe was appropriated, and holiday became Hollywood.

Driving down Euclid Avenue, the Cleveland Clinic looms high. Patients inside repose in the indestructible hope and strength of watchers at the curb below.

Ground Zero lands us across the street from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. A limousine stands ready to whisk away the bridal party, celebrating a wedding inside.

In the movie Shooting Stars, this old church building plays the role of high school for LeBron James. Sports heroes meld into show business, combining the creative energy of the most profitable Americans in the land. Entertainment choices bedazzle.

A simple surprise hanging in a tree is our choice. With a smile for Lilly, we re-nest the bird.

Two hours homeward, the display of Midwestern Lights satisfies.

If only every Cache Owner made this promise. CO Shell Leavers have put their reputation on the line, assuring us that indeed we will.

En route on I-71 northbound, we are ever grateful for ODOT’s rest for the weary, and the caretakers who maintain these traveler relief stations.

Inside the rest stop, an abrupt reminder of those who see human beings as the most lucrative of trading commodities, whether for labor, exploitation, consumer marketing, addictions, data collection, or experimentation. Fueled by the colossal, insatiable addictions of wealth and power, these traffickers seem to feel okay about capitalizing on other people’s misery.

Foreboding skies welcome us to Cleveland.

We circle through town and strike another oil well for human profiteering.

Our GPS pilots us to Lakeview Cemetery, where the expression of the individual soul breaks forth in stone.

With a nod to the Cleveland years, the Rockefeller plot holds John D. Sr. Here lies the wealthiest American of all time, who repaid consumer dependence on his oil refineries by becoming the first billionaire in the nation.

He believed that business growth depended on the survival of the fittest. Those who could best direct the market toward the next possession, diversion, convenience, or invention deserved to win.

People leave pennies on the Father of Gasoline’s grave. It seems that gas prices have taken everything else.

The cache calls us to a fence, which appears to be protecting a ravine.

When you find it in the end, hold on.

Placed by Shell Leavers in 2014, Cache on the Rise will bring us past the resting place of President #20.

Traffic is light on a sleepy Saturday as the first Arctic front nudges a nose into central Ohio. Battled by warm air lingering from the Gulf, fierce winds blow us toward Cleveland.

A quick stop for gas gives the muggles a chance to do some muggling.

Our GPS lands at Lakeview. The type of place where you really want to pay attention to closing time.

A Civil War veteran, President Garfield advocated for fully integrated citizenship for all Black Americans. He believed that, in the oppressor relationship, the guilt, hypocrisy, quiet resistance and open rebellion, increasing violence, and social degradation, wronged and destroyed both parties.

President Garfield governed four months. He was shot in a railway station, since Presidents at that time traveled like everyone else. Three months later, he died.

The Constitution, just one hundred years old, held the government together. A legal framework, constructed for a still undefined country, carried 38 states and numerous territories through this Presidential assassination.

Our GPS wanders to a quiet spot. Swans swim in the pond below.

Stay grounded, says the hint.

Slowly the maple leaves put on their red pajamas. While we battle the snow, they will be tucked into their warm winter’s bed. How gently they encourage us that spring will unfurl the gold of leaves already waiting.

Placed by Cache Owner TheKeeperFamily a decade ago, In Memoriam calls us to mark the legacy of Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

Our geotrail takes us north, toward Cleveland’s University Circle, home of museums, botanical gardens, music makers, and . . . . a university. We will be three of 2.5 million visitors this year.

Our GPS lands across from the Museum of Natural History, undergoing a facelift in keeping with 100 years of wrinkles.

Across a quiet plaza, Stephanie watches all who enter here.

Forty years after the Little Rock Nine entered a desegregated high school, a century after Black southerners fled to the North and encountered entrenched discrimination, Stephanie Tubbs Jones was elected to Congress.

Elected in 1998, Stephanie fought for what she believed in. She focused on outlawing predatory mortgages, financing fire prevention on college campuses, and supporting health initiatives for Black women.

In 2005, Stephanie believed irregular voting procedures had affected the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. She and colleague Barbara Boxer made a formal objection during the ceremonial electoral vote count in the joint session of Congress. Both chambers debated the issue and voted to uphold the results.

We find the sweet treasure left in memoriam of a valiant fighter and trailblazer.

Hat tip to Langston Hughes.

On our journey home, we enjoy walking into a restaurant and eating lunch. No rules about that any more.

Cache Owner JoesBar asks us to find Gordon, as we hop on the interstate toward Cleveland. A few thumb clicks are not going to work to cover the distance. We have logged out of digital time. Now we must operate in the slow gravity of roadway, Honda Civic, and eyeball-to-eyeball facetime.

The silent, stunning change of seasons animates, as red and yellow trees find their own voices amid the summer greens of juniper, sage, moss and jungle. A fierce wind persuades reluctant leaves to take the downward plunge, adding fresh energy to next spring’s new growth.

Our GPS lands at the Lakefront Nature Preserve, where unfolds the phenomenon of industrial skeletons repurposed into a vibrant sanctuary for birds, butterflies and all manner of species.

For decades, manufacturing waste, dumped into the Cuyahoga River, was then dredged into the open waters of Lake Erie. Horrified by the resulting poisoning of lake life, protectors of the mother lake pushed back. Confined Disposal Facilities were the answer, established as above-ground landfills for dredge collection. The outer boundary of the land where we stand is actually a freighter, dropped into the lake to confine dumped sediments against the shore. Now this retired CDF breathes and blooms. Rebounding bird routes intersect above an extravagance of flora, slowly exfoliating grace and beauty over a graveyard of wealth-mongering rapacity.

The geotrail is fine. Others have come to savor this place.

What happened to Gordon? He retailed the first mega grocery store chain, brokered iron ore deals to manufacturing interests, speculated in land and real estate sales, and generally benefited from the era of plentiful treasures from the earth. No longer Gordon Park, the Lakefront Nature Preserve returns to public ownership.

Next door, the entrails of the Nike Site CL-02, loaded and ready from 1957 to 1971, have found new life as a memorial to a native son, killed at Pearl Harbor.

Like a toddler dragging a rosy blanket to bed, the sunset trails us homeward.

The William G. Mather will take us to the northern coast of our state and nation, Cleveland, Ohio, where Cache Owner JoesBar has chained a cache. To something.

Darkening skies over October cornfields trace our trail north. We see ever-larger industrial agriculture absorbing small farmers,  as livestock and small fields struggle to produce enough cash, and manufacturing beckons with steady paychecks.

Reaching the Ohio turnpike, we close in on Port Cleveland. Miles of prime lakefront have given rise to epic museums, stadiums, parks and other community spaces.

Our geotrail leads past the Cleveland Browns football stadium, where strategic movements of offense and defense rival the campaigns of generals and foot soldiers on this land in centuries past. Tacklers charge, mimicking the bayonet-driven conquests of those conflicts.

Fine-tuned tournaments define passionate seasons of wins and losses. Injuries pile up, and the wounded, from teenagers to middle-agers, are retired from the battle lines. Every year the draft pulls in new recruits, while folks back home follow with baited breath. The generations of violence brought to this soil slowly metamorphose into contests on the field.

International competitions bring the youngest and best from every nation, vicarious troops for millions of ordinary people. Oblivious to their escape from the ingestion of world wars, humanity lives out another 60 years of their lives.

Our GPS lands for our introduction to Mr. Mather. Upon inheriting an iron-mining company from his father, he operated it for another 50 years, providing steel for countless railroads and two world wars. After work, he kicked back in his $2 million home and gardens.

The 600-foot-long Mather freighter carried bulk cargo all over the Great Lakes, connecting mines with steel manufacturing plants. As fortunes were made, hundreds of jobs rose and fell, striking miners were quashed by the army, and blast furnace leakages spilled into rivers.

The hint suggests that we look for  the chain, and we do see quite a bit of chain.

Oh, that chain.

On the way home, a haunting valedictory.

Aiming for the Cleveland coast, we search for Ducats, and the corner of a baseball field.

Hickories and aspens add bursts of yellow to the ever-changing fall kaleidoscope. When Cache Owner callmeox placed Ducats 15 years ago, the cache description ended with “Go Tribe.” In that time span, a nation said “enough” with sports images, and profits, made from tribal symbols.

The Cleveland Indians looked down the bridge to the Guardian statues dear to the city, and the Cleveland Guardians were born. Guarding history, legacy, a piece of land on a Great Lake, and future generations.

Next door to the Guardians play the Cavaliers, incubator of LeBron James, who is distinguished for ending the Cleveland sports curse in 2016, among other things.

Our GPS lands us at the corner of the field. Signs point to a magnetic treasure.

When there’s no parking, or you won’t pay for parking, and your driver “circles the block,” there’s time to meditate.

Cache Owner 1Jofrko14 has written an impressive description of habitat revitalization in the river flats, where Scranton Transformation now calls us.

On our Cleveland-bound freeway, roiling blue-grays add to the suspense of Ian’s stormy landfall far away, where clouds have become ocean.

Our GPS lands where Hope Memorial Bridge crosses Scranton Flats, in the second dip of the Cuyahoga River roller coaster. For almost a century, five miles of steel-lined shipping channel allowed room for freighters to haul iron, limestone and coal for insatiable manufacturing industries.

Between 1970 and 2010, fish population over the five-mile stretch increased.

From not one single fish.

To 52 species of fish. Cleaning up toxic waste and restoring a natural shoreline, thanks to people like our Cache Owner, now delivers the visual splendor of fall prairie before our eyes.

But for the cache. Where is the geotrail? When we mention a geotrail, we mean a loosely defined, perhaps somewhat undefined, possibly totally undefined path made by previous cachers toward a cache. Or possibly not toward a cache, if the blind are leading the blind. In that circumstance, only under-the-breath mutters are permitted.

This geotrail was right on. Thank you, cachers, brave scout, and log signer. Don’t forget to wipe off the poison ivy.

And thank you, Great Artist, and all assistants, for the fall banquet of color served up here.

Under the watchful eye of state patrol cars, north-bound Interstate 71 has aged from accelerator-pumping speed contests to sedate scenic drives.

We aim for Cleveland, our neighbor on The Lake, and Cache Owner CarpenterLuvaKatCrew’s hide on Quigley Street. Against the dismally grey sky, one maple lights a flamboyant candle on the autumn birthday cake.

As we cross the great divide, we enter the land of north-running rivers. Like state politics, rivers run in opposition, north to Lake Erie or south to the Ohio River, yet nourish all who depend on them.

Streaming by on each side, vast soybean fields mark the disappearance of small family farms into industrialized agricultural enterprises, as soil is depleted and life-giving microorganisms die out.

Our GPS lands on a still-working quarry, another treasure from the earth, offering us stone for all manner of concrete and asphalt. Upon retirement, this quarry may become a beautiful public park, like other old quarries all over our state.

Across the road, steelworks are operated by the children and grandchildren of those former farmers, adapting to industrial manufacturing.

Our hint says under a rock. There are a lot of rocks behind those gates, but as specified in the large black print, both gates are keeping themselves closed. No worries.

As we find our way back out of the city, we leave space for other travelers, on their own journey through the pages of American history.

Fields of warehouses, full of the goods we will buy tomorrow, follow our trail home.