THE SERIES:
With luck, this will be the first cache in an
ongoing series, and will spark some friendly competition amongst
cachers across the entire GOWT region. The basic idea is patterned
on the First To Find Championship series of caches,
which has enjoyed a successful two-year run in the Houston area,
and which is now up to the 28th cache in the
series.
The
premise is pretty straightforward: the first finder of this cache
can take this custom-engraved FTF Pirate travel bug trophy with
them to enjoy for awhile — snapping pictures and gloating a bit
along the way, I would imagine:
There
are, however, some key stipulations:
-
Within
30 days, the FTF cacher must hide a new cache, title it "FTF Pirate
#2," and place the trophy inside for the next lucky FTF cacher to
enjoy.
-
The new cache must be hidden within a 100 mile
radius of Jackson, Tennessee, which seems like a reasonable
distance that will cover most of the area catered to by the
Geocachers of West
Tennessee organization.
-
The
hider must mention the series in the cache description, and must
provide clear instructions so that the next winner of the trophy
will know what is expected of them. Feel free to cut-and-paste the
text from this description, if you'd like. If you need help with
inserting hyperlinks and photos into your cache description,
contact me and I'll be glad to help.
-
Follow
the normal travel bug rules by retrieving the FTF Pirate trophy
from this cache and dropping it into the inventory of your new
cache hide (the travel bug tracking number is affixed to the back
of the trophy). And while it's permissible to carry the trophy to
events, and to otherwise show it off before moving it along to your
new cache hide, nobody but the actual FTF finders should log the
travel bug. The travel bug page will thus serve as a handy record
of everyone who has nabbed FTF on one or more of the caches in the
series.
-
Have
fun and be creative on your new hide!
Whoever
grabs the trophy next time around will do likewise, and so on ad
infinitum. The trophy is six inches tall, so it should fit in most
regular-size cache containers, including small ammo cans and medium
or larger Lock-n-Locks.
The same person can grab the trophy more than once, of course, but
hopefully the series will encourage some of the newer cachers to
join the excitement of the FTF hunt. And while there are no
restrictions on the type or difficulty of each new hide, if the
Houston-area series is any indication there will likely be a good
percentage of challenging puzzles and multicaches in the mix, with
each new hider trying to come up with some off-the-wall twist to
stump their fellow cachers.
THIS CACHE:
The
inaugural cache in the series is laid out as a not-too-tough
four-stage multicache that might involve a smidgen of persistent
searching and perhaps a tiny bit of thinking outside the box, but
nothing overly challenging on the physical side.
As
referenced in the title, you will be visiting three separate but
adjacent cemeteries. These burial grounds illustrate some pretty
clear class distinctions that go back to the last century, and that
often persist to this day. You'll visit the final resting spots of
some rich and vainglorious Memphians before journeying past the
graves of the more downtrodden. At the beginning you'll notice huge
monuments, meticulous landscaping, and ongoing perpetual care. By
the time you reach the final stage, however, you might be
hard-pressed to believe that you're walking amongst the
dead.
Please
note that the first stage (at the coordinates listed above) can
only be accessed from 8AM to dusk on Monday through Saturday, and
from noon to dusk on Sunday, so plan your hunt accordingly. There
are no restrictions on the final two stages, but it would probably
be wise to confine your search to daylight hours lest you attract
unwanted attention.
At the
first two waypoints you will discover coordinates leading to the
next stop. I would rate these stages as small and micro, (although
not necessarily in that order). At the final set of coordinates
you'll be looking for a big fat ammo can chock full of goodies. In
addition to the usual trade items — and the FTF Pirate trophy, of
course, if you're first to find — I've dropped in a couple of cool
geocoins. Have fun!