A Peak Experience
It all started Dec. 11, 2013. I was getting ready for work when I got an urgent phone call from Kim Kestler in Nevada. “You better get online and check the Antique Caterpillar Machinery Owners Club (ACMOC) website,” she said.
I quickly got to the computer and there it was: A 1919 Best 25 Tracklayer, screaming my name. A Cat spotter had been hiking in the hills and posted pictures of an abandoned strip mine on a remote hiking trail in the Simi Valley hills of southern California. On the edge of a heart attack, I began reading the ensuing posts (did anyone else feel the same?!?). But nobody reading the post knew the exact location of the tractor.
That day, while working at my real job, I researched anything that resembled rusty iron in the Simi Valley hills. When I got home that night, I told my wife about the abandoned tractor and showed her the pictures that had been posted. She went to work on Google Earth and in about 15 minutes had found the exact
