Some while ago now, Larry kindly reviewed Markeroni, so now it’s my turn to return the favor. This well-written blog shows you some of the hidden nooks of Idaho that you wouldn’t necessarily know about, which is half the joy of marker-hunting, isn’t it?

Idaho’s historical marker guidebook takes the guesswork out; it lists the marker by highway and mile marker. The signs are enormous and really easy to spot.

I rode to Idaho once a few years ago, for a motorcycle rally. After a little adventure that required my bike to be fixed in the field, I bumped into some other Californian riders from my club and we rode into Boise together. The really neat bit was that where we pulled in for a break was a historical marker…my first ever Idaho one.

Anyway, if you enjoy travel and markers, check out the blog. It’s updated regularly and is pretty darn interesting.

Collectors of National Parks pass stamps can get a new stamp; collectors of historic landmarks can, virtually-speaking, collect a new landmark.

The status will be formally assigned in January, with an equally formal dedication in April. If you happen to be in the Hope, Arkansas area at that time, we suggest you try to attend. They don’t dedicate National Historic Sites very often and there is likely to be pageantry.

The site will be called the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site. Here’s the press release.

Carrot #1: I will give a year’s premium membership (Stardom) to the 777th person to sign up at Markeroni, SO LONG AS YOU DO SO ON AUGUST 13 2010, Universal Time.

Carrot #2: If you refer someone to the site, and they are 777th, you’ll receive three months of Stardom.

Carrot #3: If you, by the end of August, take a photograph of yourself or a mascot at a historical marker, then blog or facebook it, link to this blog post and/or Markeroni.com and post the link as a reply to this post, I will send you a postcard. I’ll contact you for an address; whatever you do, don’t post an address in comments.

You can expect the postcard by the end of the year. I may need to spread the cost out, but it probably won’t take that long.

I will also create a round-up post with all the links.

“While supplies last”–I will send no more than 49 postcards (seven squared). There is no limit on links.

Three rules:

1. You can’t use an already-existing photograph. It has to be a new excursion in which you go out to a historic place.
2. Your comment has to have an August, 2010 date; Markeroni uses Universal Time, so plan accordingly.
3. Your blog post etc. must include a link to either Markeroni’s homepage, http://www.markeroni.com or this blog post–or both.

Since we began, on August 13, 2003:

• We have 776 members. No, I am not making this up.
• We have had over 72,000 visits.
• There are 138,831 landmarks in the database waiting for you to find
• We have collectively found 23,803 landmarks

In the last year we have:

• Logged 7,520 landmarks
• Started a ground-up rebuild of the site, which is ongoing
• Held the second Mass Snarfari, in Virginia
• Redesigned the Catalog

In many ways it’s been a challenging year, one for rethinking, consolidating and reworking. It’s also been a fantastic year, with a mention in The Washington Post and all sorts of fun adventures and projects planned.

Year Seven, Dear Markeroons, will rock.

As of today, the blog, which was “down” for a long time, as you can probably tell, is back. The Facebook page is starting to come into its own. The main index page has undergone a slight refurbishment, mostly to install social media widgetry and other adventures.

Thank you, everyone, for loving the site, taking part, helping as volunteers and in other ways, and for being there.

Our goals: We bring together those who love the thrill of looking for historic places, while exercising our serious sides of building up an archive and helping historical preservation.

We were founded in 2003, and as such are the oldest online community dedicated to historical markers, historic landmarks and history plaques (like blue plaques and Canadian heritage plaques).

Question: What do you get when you assemble four BookCrossers who have recently become Markeroons for an all-day snarfing spree across two states?

Answer: Plenty of good times!

Four Markeroons—crrcookie, KateKintail, melydia, and petrini1—decided to have a girls’ day out and snarf as many historical markers as possible in a single day. The four of us initially met through BookCrossing (a hobby where you register books and release them into the wild to find new readers) but found room for Markeroni as another exciting hobby in our lives in January of 2009.

In this snarfari we focused almost exclusively on state and county marker signs because those are the only snarfs melydia likes for her log book. The rest of us snarfed a few other landmarks if they were nearby. The goal was to get 100 or more snarfs in during the day, which originally seemed overwhelming but doable if we kept a quick, steady pace. And though we fell a little short of our goal (only 65 for the day), we still had an exciting adventure together.

It began about 10 days before, when crrcookie proposed the idea, got our input, and planned the trip for May 3, 2009. Please note that the word ‘plan’ should be emphasized heavily, because crrcookie created an astounding route for us. The entire trip was listed out in a huge 14 page document, not including multiple pages of map printouts. For each snarf there was a paragraph detailing its location and appearance, as well as directions for getting from one to the other.

There were even some built-in bailout points included, in case our pace was slower than predicted. For the Maryland route, each snarf had an additional index card. With these bound in a ring, we could easily flip through in order as we went from snarf to snarf. We also had a copy of our trusty Guidebook to Virginia’s Historical Markers, in which crrcookie had written in GPS coordinates for all the markers we might visit. With two GPS units—named Serena and Daniel—along for the ride, we were all set.

The day was still young when melydia left her house and drove more than an hour to Washington, DC, picking KateKintail and petrini1 up along the way. After realizing too late that we were supposed to have taken local lanes into DC, we reached Bolling Air Force Base at 10am. We navigated through base security in half an hour and then piled into crrcookie’s van. Even with four of us along, there was more than enough for everyone to do.

Crrcookie drove the van and, amazingly, could recall most of the snarfs from memory. Petrini1 in the front passenger seat was an excellent, eagle-eyed snarf spotter. KateKintail in the back was the navigator and note-taker. Melydia pitched in with just as much navigating and much more organizing to keep our navigation tools from ending up everywhere… or ending up wet and unreadable.

Unfortunately, the day we chose for our snarfari was a wet one. It rained pretty steadily throughout the entire day and even when it let up for a little while, the ground was so wet that it was just as miserable. Knee-high wet grass, muddy fields, and giant puddles were all necessary evils we braved in the pursuit of valuable snarfs. By the end of the day, there were ten drenched socks, eight soaked-through shoes, and countless other dreadfully wet articles of clothing.

The only ones who weren’t dripping wet were our mascots—Chip, Eeyore, Peep, and Dragon—who stayed nice and dry in their raincoats made of plastic bags. Although at one point, the wind picked up and we laughed to see Dragon hanging from a marker on the end of his lanyard, actually flying!

Our first stop was supposed to be The Awakening, a non-snarfable sculpture that had recently moved to the National Harbor. Given the rain and the time it took to get through security on base, we saved that sight for another day and headed straight to Maryland.

The John Hanson marker was first on our route. We drove past the coordinates and supposed location several times, but even with many spotters we could not find the marker. We all worried that this was an ominous sign and a bad way to start the day. However, melydia came up with the brilliant, punny term ‘snarfu’ (from snafu) to name our situation, and the resulting laughter carried us in high spirits to the next marker.

We triumphantly made our first successful snarfs of the morning—the Surratt Tavern and John Wilkes Booth markers—then immediately stopped for much-needed hobbit-esque second breakfast. Though we were all enjoying the snarfari as Markeroons, we frequently slipped back into our BookCrosser ways and left books in the wild.

Like our mascots, the books were all safely bagged to protect them from the elements. But we could not resist the opportunities to leave a trail of books in our wake, especially since some markers were by great locations—a picnic area, a Starbucks, a park, a library surrounded by benches, and gas stations galore. So far a few books have already been picked up and journaled by finders.

With four of us snarfing in the rain, the pace ended up being a little slower than anticipated. We quickly figured out our order and settled into a snarfing routine. Upon reaching a marker, we all stood back so those of us wanting catalog photos could take those first without obstructions. Then those of us who wanted a photo with our mascots moved in to place our mascots—sometimes together, sometimes individually.

This sequence gave us all time to skim the inscriptions pretty well or appreciate the site where we had stopped. Because of the rain, we kept moving as much as possible and ended up reading the markers and plaques in the car on our way to the next snarfs or when we got home where it was dry.

Our next snarfu occurred when we were looking for the Cheltenham United Methodist Church marker. We drove around for a few minutes and just as we were about to give up on the hunt, our expert spotter, petrini1, spotted a marker off in a lovely, green wood. We parked the car and headed over, surprised a few minutes later to realize that it was actually a marker for the Church of the Atonement, which wasn’t even on our list. But we were happy to have this replacement snarf for our troubles.

There were far more completely flawless finds than there were snarfus throughout the day, fortunately. There were also a number of close calls. We looked everywhere for the La Plata Elementary School marker, for example, then officially gave up on it to move on to the next. When we drove down Willow Lane to turn around and get back on route, suddenly the marker appeared to us at the end of the street where it wasn’t supposed to be.

When we stopped at Saint Ignatius’ Church/Saint Thomas’ Manor, we knew there was one official marker and another plaque on a rock to snarf. But we noticed a sign to the far right of the lovely, old building and headed over to it, thinking it might be snarfable. It was, in fact, a map of the grounds with ‘historical marker’ clearly labeled for us. However, there were three markers listed and we had only found two.

So we walked around the side of the building, back to the cemetery before deciding we had gone too far. We returned to the front to where the manor house and the chapel buildings merged and found that we had walked right past a smaller stone marker with a plaque in our efforts to get to the map.

One of our favorites of the Maryland leg of the trip was the 300-Year Old Southern Red Oak marker. Though we expected the tree to be long gone, the marker itself was in a gorgeous, wooded location. And we had fun looking around just to be sure the special, old tree wasn’t hiding in plain sight among all the others.

Our goal was to snarf through the morning in Maryland and wind up in Fredericksburg, VA around lunchtime. When we stopped for a bathroom break at 1:30, we were still in Maryland and horribly behind schedule. So we decided to skip quite a lot and head into Virginia.

The Nice Bridge granted us access from Maryland to Virginia, though seeing the bridge standing alone, suspended in the fog was more creepy and surreal than nice. Upon arriving in Virginia, we were greeted with our very first Blue Star Memorial Highway marker snarf.

We had lunch at a Subway, affording us the opportunity to get rid of a few more BookCrossing books we’d brought along.

Since our goal was to get as many snarfs as we could, we were especially glad to find locations were the snarfage was plentiful. Emmanuel Church was a great stop for this as we noticed there were two markers on the grounds and the church itself was both on the Virginia State Historical Register and the National Register. There were also a few places where there were rows of state markers, one right beside another.

At one such location, crrcookie set her camera on a tripod and recorded our snarfing activities in real time, capturing our mad dashes from one marker to the next, taking plain pictures suitable for the catalog and then fun pictures with our mascots for our log books. We often wondered what onlookers must think of our mad dashes and strange mascot-filled photos, especially since we received a few honks from cars passing by. But, as you can see from the video, we didn’t let anything ruin our fun—not even the horribly muddy ground and tall grass that left us miserably soaked up to the knees!

Video: Markeroni Snarfari 3 May 2009

We were also thrilled when we stumbled upon markers that weren’t listed on our itinerary. The cry of “Bonus snarf!” soon became one of our favorite sounds. It was especially great when the bonus snarfs turned out to be interesting markers or grand statues, like the one-third scale replica of the Iwo Jima statue at Quantico.

Hand in hand with the fun was also danger. Our quick pace was slowed a number of times when we had to walk along shoulders of roads, carefully cross railroad tracks, or jump over ditches. Running across more than four lanes of traffic to a marker and then back again were mini adventures in and of themselves. These were also excellent markers to snarf during a snarfari because we had safety in numbers and multiple pairs of eyes to be on the lookout for danger.

As the day went on, we shared many jokes. Merely glancing at the Surgeon General Revolutionary Army marker at first resulted in misreading it as the Surgeon General Revolutionary War. This conjured up images of surgeons general of many different countries fighting and going at each other with scalpels. As one marker for a church was close to a row of car dealerships, the clever nickname of Our Lady of Christ-ler was unavoidable. By the end of the day, we were exhausted and laughing at just about anything remotely funny.

Since it was growing late, we cut out many of our planned Virginia snarfs and headed home on Route 1. Along the way there were plenty of markers, including some Z Markers, which mark the boundaries between counties in Virginia. These are special because each side of the marker sign tells about the county it’s facing. So we had two photos to take of each of these signs. And it was fun to use those to mark our progress from county to county on the way back home.

We stopped snarfing when it grew dark. We dropped petrini1 off first at home at 8:00pm before continuing to DC. Then melydia and KateKintail headed back to Virginia after a long but productive day. We look forward to our next snarfari, which will be tackling parts of Fairfax, VA in June.

Our Snarfari Stats:
Markeroons present: 4
States we snarfed in: 2
Snarfs logged in one day: 65
Unexpected bonus snarfs found: at least 8
Books released along the way: more than 20 (3 caught & journaled so far)