Lake Lanier is shaped roughly like a “Y” with the Chestatee River entering from the Northwest and the Chatthoochee River entering from the Northeast. This cache is hidden on a long, narrow island where these two great rivers meet.
I thought I’d research the meanings of these two Indian words.
I found several translations for the word Chestatee. It is a Cherokee word meaning pine torch place or place of lights or fire light place. Hunting parties would build bonfires along the banks of this river. These fires were used to light the torches used while hunting deer and other game at night in the forest bordering the river.
Chattahoochee also has a beautiful meaning. It is a Creek Indian word meaning river of painted rocks. The Chattahoochee was the dividing line between the Cherokee and Creek nations. The Creeks dominated the South and East side of the line and the Cherokee territory was to the North and West. Half of all Georgians rely on the Chattahoochee for their drinking water!
The island has several nice sandy beaches which are popular spots for boaters enjoying the lake on weekends. Running through the narrowest point of the island is an old dirt road with stone walls on either side. The stones are set in concrete and someone scratched 1940 into the side before the concrete cured. At least I think that’s a zero at the end. A section of the road and its stone walls are missing. Perhaps it was washed away when the lake was at its highest level. In 1964 the water level reached 1077.15’. 1071’ is full pool (which we don’t see very often lately). In fact this year it's looking like we'll break the low water level record.
The break in the road is the location of the first stage. Please leave no trace and re-hide things exactly as you found them. The cache itself is an aggressively hidden 
. You'll walk around .3 miles total from stage one back to stage one. Each stage's coordinates are the average of 500 samples taken at that spot on a clear sunny day. Hope you enjoy the hunt as much as I enjoyed the hide!!
Also, if you thumb through the pages of the log book, you'll find the solution to the Howdy Neighbor puzzle.
| A note about Trade Items, Travel Bugs, and Geocoins... |
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Please don't take a travel bug (TB) or trackable geocoin from this cache unless you intend to log it properly and move it to a new cache. Since trackables are not trade items, "Took a bag of marbles, left a TB" is not good. If you take a trade item from this cache, please replace it with something of equal or greater value. Then decide if you want to grab or drop off a TB or trackable geocoin.
Thanks for your interest and I hope you enjoy the cache!
- WakeboardLanier |
| Congratulations to Boca Bob for the FTF!! |
10/16/07: Since the DNFs are piling up, I decided to increase the difficulty a half point and add info to the hints.