We found our van on Google Earth, it’s parked at the Coy Bald Trailhead, Hercules Glades.

A couple of weeks ago I was making maps of the put-ins for lake Springfield and the Upper James River for a post on paddling on Lake Springfield, when I noticed that the aerial photography looked very recent. April 13, 2013, in fact. So I did a quick check.

The images are stunningly clear, you can see individual limbs on the trees. That’s great for reconnoitering a hike or backpacking trip. Then it dawned on us. Saturday April 13, 2013 we were backpacking at Hercules Glades – mapping the west end of the pilots trail and looking for a campsite at the top of the bluffs overlooking Beaver Creek.

Cool, maybe we could find ourselves hiking the trail! We’ve studied the pictures in detail but haven’t been able to find ourselves – we reckon we were behind Lower Pilot knob at around the time the ‘plane went over. However, we checked the Coy Bald trailhead, and there’s our van sitting in the shade to the south east of the parking lot. If you look carefully you can also see a couple of people standing next to their car with its doors open. I think I found some hikers on the trail headed down towards Long Creek, but it is not us. That’s what I get for wearing camo when I’m backpacking!

Our van parked at the Hercules Glades, Coy Bald Trailhead Parking Lot on Google Earth