My Waterloo Mystery Cache

This creation was not an easy one to figure out.

Here's a hint for parking when you go for the cache: free firewood, Falls Ave Bridge, walk across the HWY.

This is a “pictocache” that will require you to find various objects in pictures and match them up with a numbered list of coordinates. The coordinates are sometimes off by a block, on purpose. It’s like multiple choice. Just choose the best one. Once you get the list of coordinate numbers in place you will use them to determine the coordinate of a small strip of aluminum attached to the backside of an object. The engraved numbers should be enough for you to get to the cache. Drive to the dead-end and walk in. Cut through the valley.

First of all I want to say that I named this "My Waterloo" because I like to think of it as promoting Waterloo in some small way, like "My Waterloo Days" does in a big way.

All the images listed below were taken in the city of Waterloo, Iowa. Only a few of the coords are very near the object however. That means that you will often have to drive around a bit to find the object in the image. The coords of some of the easy to spot things are off by a couple blocks. All but one object is visible without getting out of the car; the coord for that one is close. Once you complete the exercise of matching a best coord with an object you’ll have to use the order of the numbered coords to calculate the position of a little piece of aluminum with the coordinate for the cache engraved into it. All the images represent interesting attributes of this fine city where I have lived for more than half a century.

Matching ONE object with ONE NEAREST coord is critical. Two of the coords AND one of the images are “distracters” (i.e. bogus). The two distracter coords are not as close to any of the “good” images as is another coord. If you happen to find the one distracter image you will notice that it is not as close to any coord as another object is. That gives it away as the distracter. No coord that’s not used will be at all close to it.

Once you find everything you need to find you should have a list of coord numbers. For example, if the first three image/coord pairs are, Image 1 = coord 10, image 2 = coord 3, and image 3 = coord 8, you should have written 10, 3, and 8 so far.

Now to obtain the coord for the 1st cache add together the first 10 of the 16 rearranged coord designations and add the last 6 together then subtract the sum of the last 6 from the sum of the first 10. Divide the answer by 100 and add the result to both the incorrect lat and long here: 42 29.436 by 92 21.711 to get the correct lat and long for the 1st cache.

You can check your answer to this cache on Geochecker.com. This URL for terraserver viewer shows the position of all the waymarks that you will need to check out!

The cache is a small camouflaged Lock-n-Lock container on the ground. NOTE! So that you may get good reception near the cache I made it so the cache is a number of feet directly east of the coordinates engraved on the metal. The coordinates are for a spot out in the open. I left the cache on the edge of the woods.

NOTE: If printing off the gallery page is not sharp enough you may want to copy and paste each of the pictures onto a Word document and shrink them down to fit several on a page before printing them to take along with you. ALSO, I UPLOADED THE IMAGES FROM LAST TO FIRST, AS I HAVE ALWAYS DONE. I CANNOT TAKE CREDIT FOR THE FACT THAT THEY ARE OUT OF SEQUENCE! AT LEAST THEY ARE CORRECTLY ORDERED IN THE GALLERY.

Below is the list of the coords to consider when completing this exercise. [Remember, two are not the best choice for any of the images!] You don't have to enter them into a GPSr. Just take a copy of the list with you and watch to see them come up as you drive around. Make sure not to get in a wreck! We don't want to have people equating geocaching while driving with cell phone use while driving!

In the final cache I initially placed two waterproof match containers (great for microcaches), a Stick-em Ball, a No Spill oil spout, two fishing bobbers, Kids Scissors and my travel bugs Tigler the Wigler and Wacky Fender. Good luck and enjoy My Waterloo!