General rules: Anyone may log the caches in this series, but kids (12 years old and under) can earn special awards. Kids logging any 4 of the 6 caches in either the Long Ago But Not Far Away - Spring Mountain series or the Long Ago But Not Far Away - Fairview series and emailing the answers to the Kids' Answer Sheet will receive a certificate and a special prize for each series.
Kids earning both the Spring Mountain and the Fairview certificates will receive a special geocoin. Cachers over 12 years old will not receive a prize, certificate, or geocoin. Multiple children in a family may each receive their own awards, but each child requesting an award must have been present during all the cache hunts. Make sure you print out the Kids' Answer Sheet for Spring Mountain before beginning this project!
To claim your award(s), click “Spring Mountain Community Club” just below the cache title and send an email including:
(1) the names of the caches you found along with the answers to their questions,
(2) your name and caching name, and
(3) your age.
(Information will be used to verify your qualification and print your certificate and will then be deleted. Parents, please contact us if you prefer not to share this information.)
Other caches in this series:
Bag of Gold
Davy Crockett
Mountains to Sea
Rolling Stones
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Fawn Nicks
Permission has been graciously granted by the landowner, so please treat the property respectfully. Notice: There are briars and weeds. Wear long pants and closed shoes.
The posted coordinates will take you to a view of the original Black Knob schoolhouse built in the 1890s. It has been remodeled (including the front porch addition) into a private residence, so please respect the family’s privacy and enjoy it from afar. Look southwest (slightly uphill) to the first house straight in line with the road. This building was the hub of Spring Mountain public education for many years. Children studied reading, spelling, and vocabulary here using the famous Noah Webster’s Blue Back Speller and the McGuffey Reader.
Black Knob School, 1907
The actual cache can be found at N 35º 32.??? W 82º 22.???.
To find the correct numbers for the “?’s,” read on…
Kids and adults: “Phonics” is a way of learning to read that uses the sounds of the letters in a word, rather than what the word looks like. Even if you haven’t been lucky enough to learn phonics, you can find this mystery cache by reading the Puzzle below. The needed numbers are inserted into the Puzzle text below (in correct order). Example: "Now is eight the time for all good men..." The inserted number is 8. When you translate this, besides solving the puzzle, you’ll learn something about education many years ago in Spring Mountain.
Phonics lesson from Noah Webster's Blue Back Speller
Puzzle:
Sprang Mounting worse saddle din delayed serpent dean hunters, add duh
dime no earth win reed ding edge chew cage shun worse base ton
fawn nicks. Eff I’ve passable, dee Know a Web stirs blew beck spill err
an too letter them Mick cuff e-readers worth up reefer dreading
mutt aerial.
Moss pair ants free ether tot the roan chilled ran ore relay Donna pry vat
tooter eff day wore well the an neff too higher won. Deb lack mob skull
how’s maid grew ped chew cage shun a flailable too Sprang Mounting
chilled run, oh penning nth aid dean mine tease. Steel, moss fame lilies
kneaded there chilled run two whelp whiff fame lily shore sand
form were quest fussed. At ending skull wuss ate opry village
tube eon joined nth winner aft turf arm plan ting and/or vesting worse
hunt red Finnish.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.
Alternatively, use this check sum method: write all six digits as numerals, not words, then add up all six individual digits. They should equal 18.
Hint: Having trouble? (1.) Try reading the words in the puzzle out loud and thinking about what other words they sound like. (2.) Print out this page and write the real words above each “sound word.” (3.) Circle suspected number words and leave them out of the translated sentence. (4.) If a suspected number word makes sense in the sentence, it isn’t part of the coords. Leave it in the sentence. Example: "Wee wan too prices." = "We won two prizes," NOT "We 1 2 prizes."
Adults: Did you learn to read by the “Sight Method” or maybe “Whole Language?” Supposedly they are quicker methods to learn than phonics, so many school children today are taught to read by simply memorizing the look of a word (mostly the first and last letters and the length of the word). The biggest drawback to the sight/whole language methods is that the reader is left unprepared to deal with words that they have never seen before.
Early American children learned to read by the phonics method. First they learned the sound of each single letter of the alphabet, then the sounds of common groups of letters (such as “th” and “gh”). Of course, eventually they subconsciously memorized the “look” of common words and didn’t have to “sound them out” anymore to read them, but they also had the skills to decode any English word, even if they had never seen it before.
Learning to read by phonics may take a bit longer, but a well-taught phonetic reader can “sound out” the word, thus instantly being able to pronounce the word and hopefully to recognize its meaning from having previously heard it in conversations.
So, if you run into a contumacious semasiological unit, don’t be a “xenophobe” - use phonics efficaciously! (Congratulations if you can correctly pronounce those words!)
If you are working toward the kids' Spring Mountain prizes, be sure to write down the publication date shown at the bottom of the copy of the title page from Noah Webster’s Blue Back Speller, located inside the cache container.