It's a Smiley Face World Mystery Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size:
 (small)
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Geocachers love to see smiley faces all over the geocaching map to represent found caches. There is also another kind of smiley face that you can find on a geocaching map. Final location of this cache puzzle is up in the East Bay hills not more than 1 mile from starting coordinates.
Usually when you find a geocache and log it, you get a new smiley face coming up on your geocaching map where there was none before. THis puzzle points to and honors those who've taken the smiley face on a map concept to another level. There are a few places in the USA where geocachers have planted a whole series of puzzle caches and set up the starting coordinates locations of these "unknown" puzzle caches in such a way as to create a blue smiley face made up of question marks on the geocaching map.
Your task is to find one such blue smiley face located in North Carolina. (If by some odd coincidence there is more than one in that state, use hint to narrow things down!) There's another one I found in Georgia (GC3VXT2) , but it's premium member only so I'll stick with the one in North Carolina. THere's also a green smiley face made of traditional caches ( GC18PTM) in Nevada: and I wouldn't be surprised if there were still more! NOTE: It is a bit of a risk making my geocache puzzle dependent on someone else's geocache that might at some point be archived. If you can't find the North Carolina smiley face, let me know and if those North Carolina geocaches are no longer active I will create a different puzzle for this hide.
Here's another clue to find the North Carolina smiley face: 2 Miscreants Don't Get Paid.
Once you find that North Carolina blue smiley face, take the FIRST of the correlated series of puzzle geocaches and its STARTING coordinates (not final coordinates!) will be XX AB.CDE North, XXX FG.HIJ West.
Use these coordinates to determine the FINAL coordinates of THIS puzzle cache, which will be 37 KL.MNP North, 122 QR.STU West.
Where:
K = B, L = J, M = A, N = E- D, P = H and
Q = F, R = J, S = H + C, T = H, U = H + G.
You can arrive at the general area via trails approaching from the north or from the south. The trail approaching from the south is quicker: you can get to the GZ from a paved roadway within 10-15 minutes.
Most direct route to the cache is quite steep. THere's another much less steep way if you circle around and approach from the side.
Cache is a pill bottle tucked into a niche on the inside of the wreck. Please replace as found so that it's held into place, this will prevent it from getting lost.
Making sure the cache stays hidden helps, as this spot is a smiley face location for certain locals...I saw about five 8 to 12 year old boys at GZ not long after planting the cache....
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ebnqjnlf 64,74N be 64, 9. Ynxr Yher. Puvzarl Ebpx.
Uvqr: cvyy obggyr, npprffvoyr sebz vafvqr gur jerpx, ghpxrq vagb avpur ba abegu pbeare jnyy.
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:

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