Little Red Caboose Traditional Geocache
Iowa Tom: This container has vanished for the last time. I Made a new hide to take its place. It'll be more of a challenge to find. Hopefully it'll be more fun too! [:)] This is the first actual cache I've archived.
-it
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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Near the interesting remains of an old cabin that had a little red caboose next to it.
NOTE: read the warning at the end of this description.
Bring your own writing utensil. It would be best to sign the log using a pen, not a pencil.
This is a drive by and easy to find, if you look in the right place. It’s an interesting location, once owned by someone that was probably a fisherman and a rock and fossil collector. Look at the rocks in the two remaining stone structures and you will get a sense of the maker’s interests. As a rockhound myself I can relate to this. It appears as though the Black Hills and Yellowstone were vacationing localities for the maker of the structures here. I remember seeing milky quartz, gabro and marble (shaped into a block), a granite containing sizable crystals of tourmaline, tuffa, an fossil of an ammonite (a nautilus-like creature) and a fossil colonial coral called Hexagonaria
Up to the late 60s there was a cabin at this location. It had a little red caboose on the property. After the property was abandoned I remember climbing onto it. The cabin and the caboose were taken out when the city bought the property to make what is now called the Green belt. According to Black Hawk County Online, the deed for this land was transferred to the Waterloo Park Commission on 3/28/69. Does anybody know the history of the wooden “7 bridges” that used to cross the Black Hawk Creek in this part of Black Hawk County? I remember a few of them being extant until the late 50s and early 60s. The remains of one still exists a mile upstream from this location and there was one near this cache as well.
Watch out for old wire hidden at times! I attempted to get up speed to race into the woods on my bike only to get stopped abruptly when I ran into a thick smooth wire strung across at chest height. Ouch! [Note: that wire is now at ground level.]
If you are here in 3rd to 4th week of April you should check out the veritable sea of bluebells in the bird sanctuary 100 yards east of the cache.
WARNING: As of 3/4/06 I moved the cache -which is now a micro about the size of a film can- to a safer location. I see that the structure that used to be my hiding place is succumbing to old gage and the elements. Therefore you no longer have reach up into anything for the cache.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Cbfgrevbe, erq oevpx