Some call Austin "the live music capital of the world". There's no doubt it is a live music hot spot, which might make it that much harder for a musician to make a living here.
To find the cache, find the pavilion in the park, and look for the curved cast iron grate on the ground in front of it. Look at the last panel on the north end of the arc. Near the word "URBAN", look for two three-digit numbers. There are duplicate sets of numbers: one set on the grate and one on the frame. The numbers are 1/8 inch high, stamped into the metal. Figure out what to do with those two three-digit numbers and you'll be on your way to the cache.
| Note 1 on 6/23/2016: A recent visitor reported that the numbers were getting difficult to read. I made a maintenance visit today and believe that the main set of numbers (on the frame, near the word "URBAN") are readable, except maybe for the first digit in the first group, which is a 5. |
| Note 2 on 6/23/2016: I am changing the terrain rating to 3.5 from the original 2.5 to more accurately reflect the effort required, and early Summer it may be closer to 4 because of the heat and the waist-high grass and weeds. |
The cache container is a .50 cal. ammo can. Please try to stick to a music performance theme. See the original cache contents for ideas. TNLN is OK too. Also, please try to hide your tracks in the immediate vicinity of the cache.
There are prickly pears, pencil cactus, and fire ants in the park. I also found quite a few driving range golf balls in the area. Look out! There was a lot of trash the day I hid the cache, so bring your "cache in, trash out" bags. Stay away from the piles of antique broken glass, though. On a maintenance visit I found lots of local wildlife on and around the container, including one scorpion. Gloves might be a good idea!
Original cache contents:
- Frenchy Fry TB
- Gibson lightning bolt guitar strap
- Hosa GPP-151 right angle 1/4" phone plug (male) to 1/4" phone jack
- 25' guitar/keyboard cord
- Fender 6" 1/4" phone plug (male) to 1/4" phone plug (male)
- GHS Fast Fret ("Cleans strings, lets you play faster")
- Gibson polishing cloth
- The Duane Allman Slide ("An exact reproduction of the original Coricidin(R) bottle made famous by DUANE ALLMAN!")
- Set of three Rockin Billy's dice control knobs for electric guitar
- Three fast winders
- Two packs of 24 Martin & Co. #1 (light gauge) guitar picks Please take just a few picks, not a whole pack, so they'll last longer.
- A red, white, and blue recordable CD for your demo
All items are new. Sorry the initial cache contents are skewed toward guitar players. I play bass myself, and most of the affordable stuff I found while shopping was for guitars. Besides, the place I went shopping for cache loot was named ______ Center! *Don't want this to appear as a commercial plug!
| Note 1: when solving the puzzle and entering the final coordinates into your GPSr, you need to be working in degrees and decimal minutes, as in Nddº mm.mmm Wddd mm.mmmº. If you use decimal degrees, as in Ndd.dddddº Wddd.dddddº, you'll be in trouble. |
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Note 2: until Oct. 21, 2010, you had to visit the area around the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue in order to get the final coordinates for this cache. Since the cache got few visits, I added the alternate puzzle above. Here are the original instructions, in case you would find them more fun or if the redirector in the park is missing. Since the cache can be found with one stop now, I have reduced the difficulty rating from 2.5 to 2.
First you need to go to N 30° 15.788 W 97° 45.041. This is a statue of an Austin music icon: you probably know who this is and can find this spot without a GPS, but you need to go there again to get the clues for the cache location. (You can also log a virtual there if you haven't already.)
- How many letters are in the word in the middle of the plaque that has this person's name on it? The number of letters is A.
- The figure is looking up a tree-lined walkway. Start walking up the walkway yourself, and before you reach the first tree, you'll come to a large gray electrical transformer box on the right. There is a number on the upper left corner (as seen from the statue), in the format 900BC8. Note B and C. Additional note 7/7/2016: the gray electrical box has been replaced with a green one with different numbers, and a digit I need is not in the new set of numbers, so until I decide on a different way for you to find B and C, I'll give them to you: B=7 and C=5.
- Now keep walking up the walkway and count the number of trees lining the right side of the walkway. Count only the row of trees nearest the walkway, not the ones further out. Subtract one to get D.
The actual cache location is:
N 30° 16.CBB
W 97° 40.ADC
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