12 Pounds of Leftover Stuff We Threw Into a Cake!! Traditional Cache

Fruitcakes: Ancient food of the Egyptians
and Non-biodegradable Geocaching Ambrosia

The fruitcake is a perennial favorite and America's number one re-gifted treat. But what is fruitcake? Where do they come from?

There are myriad myths surrounding the origins and contents of the fruitcake. Some say that there are only a few fruitcakes in existence and that these items are re-gifted year after year. Some food scholars carbon date fruitcake back to ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire. According to some historians, fruitcake was considered an essential food for the afterlife in Egyptian beliefs and there are those today who maintain that the fruitcakes should have remained in the afterlife. Still others claim that fruitcake is not just an unappetizing edible, but also a handy and lethal projectile weapon. A precious few believe the unbelievable; that fruitcakes are some sort of tasty desert. However, through careful research, I have discovered the truth.

Fruitcake is not food in the traditional sense. Its legendary ability to remain edible for weeks or months (or even years or centuries) is due at least in part to the fact that fruitcake is essentially inorganic. My extensive research into the subject has shown that because of their inorganic nature, fruitcakes do not biodegrade, making their seemingly eternal shelf-life less mysterious.

In fact, I have discovered that fruitcake is not baked at all. It is mined from the coalfields of Western Virginia.

Yes, Virginia, America's supply of fruitcake comes from a little known mining operation here, in our Commonwealth. Truly, during the hey day of the coal mining industry a small mining company unearthed a fantastical supply of fruitcake in the area. This company, which has asked to remain anonymous as to secure their hold on the regions fruitcake mining interests, has been marketing fruitcake to the American population each holiday season ever since.

After making this startling discovery, I could not, in good conscious re-gift the fruitcakes I received this year as desert items for others. Instead, I decided to try to recycle them into useful geocaching tools.

Because fruitcake is not biodegradable, it actually makes an ideal geocache container once it has been hollowed out. To that end, the container for this cache is the successful result of my experimentation with fruitcake. To that end, I have molded fruitcake into an impressive replica of an actual ammo can, which I find to be personally indistinguishable from the real thing.

Enjoy the search, and remember... just because it looks like food, doesn't mean you should eat it.

Starting on December 25th and ending on January 5, one new cache in this series will be released each day, until the song is complete. Each cache in this series will contain clues. Collect all clues and figure out the location of a prize cache with very special gifts for the first finders.

This series was inspired by JAMM, who is placing a 12 days of Cachemas series in CT.

As with all caches hidden inside public parks land, please be mindful of all posted rules, particularly those regarding access times. Do not attempt to access caches after closing hours and that is particularly true for THIS CACHE. Leaving aside the question of legality of trespassing on parks land after hours just to access this cache, I personally feel that it is unsafe to seek this cache in the dark. You will have no trouble whatsoever during the day though.