This cache is placed in Pace Bend Park, a Travis County Park located approximately 30 miles west of Austin on Lake Travis. The park is open 7 days a week from sunrise to 9pm for day-use visitors with overnight camping available. There is a fee to enter the park. Please be respectful of the posted signs and the other people using the park. This cache is placed in accordance with the guidelines for geocaches by the Travis County Park system.
Our story begins in The Shire. Here the four hobbits, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck, and Peregrin Took, leave under the guise of darkness to begin the journey that would only end at the end of our story. In order to find The Shire, you will have to find Old Man Willow, the bad guy, and Tom Bombadil, the good guy.
Background
The Shire was settled by Hobbits in the year 1601 of the Third Age (Year 1 in Shire Reckoning). The Hobbits (who originally lived in the vale of Anduin) had migrated west over the perilous Misty Mountains in the decades before that, and before entering The Shire they had lived in Dunland and parts of the depopulated Arnorian splinter-realms Cardolan and Rhudaur. It has been speculated that the Hobbits had originally moved west to escape the troubles of Mirkwood, and the evil caused by the Easterlings.
The Shire was a part of Arthedain, and as such a part of Arnor. The Hobbits obtained official permission from King Argeleb II at Norbury (Fornost) to settle the lands, which were not populated and seen as the king's hunting grounds. The King stipulated three conditions to this grant; that the hobbits should acknowledge his Lordship, that they should maintain the roads within the Shire and finally that they should aid his messengers. The Hobbits therefore considered themselves subjects of the king and sent some archers to the great battles Arnor fought against Angmar. After the fall of Arnor, the Shire remained a minor but independent, self-governing realm. The chiefs of the Clans elected an official named the Thain to hold the king's powers after the North-Kingdom fell. The first Thains were the heads of the Oldbuck clan. It later came to be held by the Tooks.
Its small size, relative lack of importance, and brave and resilient Hobbit population made it too modest an objective for conquest. More importantly, the Shire was guarded and protected by the Dúnedain Rangers, who watched the borders and kept out intruders. The only strangers to enter the Shire were the Dwarves travelling on the Great Road that ran through the Shire to and from their mines in the Blue Mountains, and the occasional Elves on their way to the Grey Havens.
This peaceful situation changed after Bilbo Baggins' acquisition of the One Ring in the year 1341 of the Shire Reckoning. Shortly after the beginning of the events described in The Lord of the Rings (autumn of the year 1418 in Shire Reckoning), the Shire was first visited by the Nine Ringwraiths and then captured by Saruman through his underling Lotho Sackville-Baggins, who turned the Shire into a police state and began a massive campaign to industrialize the Shire which brought widespread misery and severely damaged its ecology. It was liberated with the help of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin after the end of the Quest of the Ring through their victory at the Battle of Bywater. After Aragorn's return as the King of Arnor and Gondor, the Shire became a protected enclave inside the Reunited Kingdom. He is known to have issued an edict that forbade the entrance of full-sized Men into the Shire. The Shire was soon restored with magic soil from Galadriel's Lórien garden (presented as a gift to Sam). The year 1420 (SR) was considered by the inhabitants of the Shire to be the most productive and prosperous year in their history.