Eglin Air Force base covers almost 500,000 acres of northwest Florida and because of their "good neighbor" policy we are fortunate to be allowed access to thousands of acres of old growth woods.
It's amazingly beautiful in there and we really enjoy time spent wandering through the woods and trails.
And you never know what you'll find wandering through there.
My Dad, the boys and I were wandering the woods looking for geocaches and one of the caches led us to an area behind Duke Field.
The cache listing told us we would be looking for a C123 Provider aircraft that crashed around 1968.
I'm not sure what I expected to find but what we did find was incredible.
This thing is huge and scattered in a relatively small area of the woods.
Interestingly, there are bullet holes in the tail wing. A lot of them.
The crash is about a mile from the end of the runway at Duke Field.
I tried to find some info on it using the numbers from the tail
But haven't had any luck yet.
My Dad wonders if it were being pulled by another plane, used for target practise and then dropped there.
The boys were so excited about the find that they forgot all about the geocache we were hunting and wanted to climb all over the wreckage.
We're wearing orange vests now while we hunt caches in the woods because it's prime hunting season and they're an important safety tool.
We looked all over for the cockpit and fuselage but didn't find them. We think they were hauled off after the crash but everything else was left.
We found this marker in front of the tail wing.
The Scout plaque has been cemented into a medium sized stone and placed by the tail.
I read in the cache logs that it was placed by a scout troop "In remembrance of any who may have died here and for all veterans"
After spending a long time exploring it was time to move on.
We had a quick picnic and were off to find more caches.
We found one later that day that definitely warrants a post of it's own.
I love wandering these woods and I really love finding stuff like this.Labels: Done
