The names of this road and the vineyard on the hill to the south come from the soil composition in this area. When Ohio and points west were being populated, the National Road near Interstate 70 served the westbound traffic of settlers and commercial shipments from the East. Construction included a graded road bed with gravel, brick, and, later, other pavement (which is detailed at the nearby Zane Grey/National Road Museum, see GCVZR7, Drivers of the Purple Sage). The drovers—livestock handlers from the area who conducted cattle drives to get their animals to markets in more populated eastern cities—quickly realized that the gravel/pavement was very hard on the animal’s hooves. The westbound influx of wagons and people, and even automobiles in the early Twentieth Century, also created difficulties for herds of meat-on-the-hoof because areas of the National Road could be very congested; animals were often spooked; grazing and watering areas became scarce. So the Clay Pike was born—a road for the eastbound traffic that paralleled the National Road but remained a trail with the natural clay soil; it was never paved until after railroad cattle cars became more common, and later refrigeration was invented, when packing houses could be closer to the pastures.
Nowadays there are still small farms along this road, but many farms have parceled off their road frontage for small residential plots, and even most of the farmers also have other employment. You may see hay fields nearby, or gathered huge round bales waiting to be used locally to feed livestock in adjacent pastures. Two generations ago, most local farms grew their own hay, and as soon as kids were old enough to carry the smaller rectangular bales, they would make a social occasion out of the hay harvest, going from farm to farm doing the hot, sticky and itchy work of walking behind the tractor/baling machine back and forth across the field and heaving the finished bales up to the stackers on the back of the haywagon or pickup truck. There was always time for lots of talking and joking, and fresh homemade lemonade and cookies was often a reward. Sometimes the farmer might even give us each a payment of maybe a dollar a day.
I had wanted to place a cache here pretty much since I began geocaching, and finally it is a reality. Recently the nearby farm has had free range guinea fowl and ducks; if you see them or other farm animals, go ahead and take photos, but leave them alone. I added the overgrowth caution attributes of thorns, PI, snakes and ticks only to remind you that they MIGHT be present, but it's really just a kid-friendly PNG except that in the summer weeds could hide things like that. Remember to park as far off the road as possible, watch for muggle vehicles on both roads, and above all, make sure the loc n loc is sealed shut when you leave.