A quick mission. Luckily the trolls had left. My locating device placed me within 9 feet of the mission objective.

Even a secret agent has to go behind the bushes…..

Patience & Sincerity

Sweet and Sour… That is the best description I can muster after finding this cache. It is an absolute thrill to be the FTF but the moment I signed the log I realized, I won’t be searching for this cache anymore. It is that one cache that my mind always drifted to when I thought about geocaching. It was my “Holy Grail” of puzzle caches for lack of a better term.

My family started geocaching in 2004. We have found some great caches and had some wonderful adventures over the last 6 years. This particular cache occupied almost a third of that timeframe. That still amazes me. We cache as a recreational activity and seldom log caches. As of the first of the year, I have started tracking my own adventures on gocache.net. Love it or hate it, it’s a great way for me to track all things found from various games on various sites. A majority of those finds are geocachings caches right now because there are more of those than any other site. This cache is the exception to that norm.

I cleared the following with the cache owner before logging;

This cache is the crown jewel of any geocachers puzzle finds. My journey on this quest probably started like many others… hundreds of questions to the Frogbot that generated answers about cities, cachers names, colors, and other information that appeared on the surface as useless. The only piece of advice I can give seekers of this cache is to be mindful of the answer that appears to have no value. After 20 months of asking questions, I found a bit of a hint that gave me the question to find the west coordinates. More accurately, I recognized this hint. I had the hint right from the start. The epiphany brought me a kick in the rear end along with the question for the west coordinates. It wasn’t that easy though… the question for the north coordinates is not the same as the question for the west coordinates. Now the question to me is… look for the other hint or analyze the west coordinate line with other information I have gathered over the last year an half? I elected to hit the field. Cachers who have hid caches in the area where I believed the cache to be located helped me eliminate areas within a 528’ radius along the west coord line. Of course I believed parking lots, roadways, railroad tracks, and buildings would be eliminated (I still looked in some of these areas). This left me several segments along the line to search, one was particularly long. I elected to search the shorter segments first. One of these segments, the second one I searched, was an urban segment and this is where the cache was found… I was moving along this segment and elected to go around a couple of public buildings. Usually I wouldn’t give an area like this a second thought however; during the search for this cache I kept my eyes peeled at or toward the west coordinate line at all times while searching. During the pass of these buildings I spied a box… A box out in the open… A box that is visible from my car… A box that is visible from at least 100’… a box that I have passed while looking for caches that had been hidden in this area… an area that I would never have guessed as a cache location… that can’t be the cache… no way… yes… way…

I almost wrecked the car doing a u-turn. I had reservation about approaching the box in its location… but this could be it so I went for it. After 20 months exposed to the elements there was noticeable weathering. It was a gold standard geocache container. I can imagine it would blend in better with the objects behind it during months that allow the growth of foliage. The lid was stuck, but opened with a bit of effort. My activity generated some interest by a city official trained to investigate suspicious behavior. Just my luck. I find a cache worth several hundred dollars and I would end up paying some kind of fine. It wasn’t to be. The city official knew what the box was, knew the person who hid it, and was making jokes. From his perspective, he wondered why it took so long to find something that it sitting out in the open. I assure you, this cache is sitting out in the open, clearly visible from the street, between two public buildings… unreal. I contacted the cache owner while I was reading the list of prizes. I put him on the speaker phone so the public official could join in on the fun.

The cacher agreed to meet me at an undisclosed location (You can see it in the picture) for the transfer of wealth. My favorite prize… A Firefrog69 Geocoin…

Well done