I was out driving between caches one Sunday afternoon and my Blackberry beeped at me for the umpteen kajillionth time. That particular beep was caused by an email from TeamCap, a good friend of ATE. She said that she was dreaming up a 5 cache series in honor of ATE getting to 5,000 finds, and wanted to know if I'd be interested in helping. I took that to mean that she wanted me to hide one of the 5. I immediately panicked because, although it was something that I would certainly want to do, I'm worse at finding places to hide a cache than I am at finding the things after someone else finds places to put them. Well, I found myself thinking about a spot near one of my caches (and not too far from another one that I recently FTFed), and then I found myself driving by that spot. So, I pulled over and parked, being very careful to not park in front of the gate. (And there's a sign there saying not to block the gate too.) Then I walked across Hwy 571, hopped over a small hill (that could be treacherous during the slippery times of the year) and found myself in a familiar creek bed. (One way of getting to the above mentioned cache that I FTFed might be to simply continue walking up that creek bed.) I found a spot for a micro. So, I put a micro there. And the next day, I typed all this up and submitted it with that "Enable cache listing..." box unchecked so it wouldn't get published until Teamcap is ready for it to.
Now, don't panic. Yeah, I did it again. You will indeed notice some woods there. But they aren't really bad woods and The Spot is sort of by itself and shouldn't be too unobvious. (But I'm wrong once in a while. (And why doesn't Firefox think "unobvious" is a word? Well, it does now.))
I originally just put that container there for the sake of having a placeholder (for some silly reason) and was thinking that I'd replace it with a Small before publication if I could get it to fit. But as I started to type all this (are you still awake?), I thought about what kind of caches ATE likes to hide, and although her range of cache styles is quite dynamic, she seems to like containers that aren't quite "normal." Well, this particular micro is a lot more "abnormal" than anything bigger that I'd come up with. So, once again, forces beyond my control forced me to do what I said that I would never do, hide a micro in the woods. But don't look for anything particularly tiny. And don't look for anything particularly tricksy. (ATE didn't hide this. I did.) Look for where you'd think is a good place for a Small.
I already mentioned that small hill that could be tricksy when things are slippery. I guess I should also point out that the above mentioned creek bed could be flooded during certain times of some years. That would greatly increase the terrain rating. If you like to wade, fine, but be warned that, although the cache is not right next to the Great Miami River, it's not a huge distance from it, and the distinction between the extended parts of rivers and the real parts of them can seem very nonexistent. And that makes me have to remind everyone that geocaching is something you do at your own risk. And while I'm at it, be careful crossing 571. (There's a pull-off/grassy drive on the cache side of 571, but I don't know that it's okay to park a car there.)
Please be careful grabbing it and putting it back to avoid a problem of much gravity.
Finally, the area is off limits at night.
Well, not quite finally. A big thank you to Bernoulli and family for the container, and...
Congratulations, Abby the Explorer!
The hint is a statement of fact, not necessarilly a suggestion.