Not Far East 05 - Side Trip Multi-cache
Not Far East 05 - Side Trip
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
All caches are hidden EAST of the path a short distance
Stage one is just coordinates. Stage two is a bison capsule inside of a fake sprinkler head. No need to approach the railroad tracks or go on private property for any stage of any cache.
This is a series of caches along the Skokie Valley Bike Path. They are designed to be done while biking (or blading) the trail. Save yourself some extra riding by starting at either #1 or #12 in the series. You can pick up all of the stage-one's in one direction, then get all of the stage-two's in the other direction. Do be warned that while all the caches are very close to the trail, you will be searching in dense brush with thorns! Bike shorts are probably a bad idea.
Side Trip
At Old Elm Road, you can take a side trip over to see Fort Sheridan 1.3 miles east of here. It's actually next to the North Shore bike path. The area has an interesting history. Here's an excerpt from the Fort Sheridan website:
The site of Fort Sheridan was established as a French trading post around 1670, and is located on an old trail between Green Bay, Wisconsin and the area that was early Chicago. The trail was used by Native Americans traveling between their hunting grounds and villages in and around Chicago and the trading posts in Wisconsin. As settlers came into the area, they in turn used the trail between trading posts to ship their goods to Chicago. These settlers, mostly immigrants from Ireland, Germany and the Scandinavian countries, never considered the present day site of Fort Sheridan advantageous for farming owing to the deep ravines, heavily forested area and shoreline location.
A small community named St. Johns was settled by the 1840’s. It was situated on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in the southeast corner of the later Fort Sheridan complex. The village contained logging leather tanning, brick making and iron casting endeavors and had a long pier that was used to ship the lumber that was harvested from the area. St. Johns ultimately became scarred by the production of 400,000 bricks annually from clay deposits along the bluffs and stripped bare by extensive lumbering operations. The village grew stagnant and became largely abandoned around 1865.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ybbx sbe gur terra znex ba gur cnirzrag naq tb rnfg whfg bss bs gur zbjrq nern. Tebhaq uvqr.