LONESOME PALM Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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A Team Barn Owls Cache! This lone palm tree has become a memorial of sorts for my family, so sharing it with our geocaching community seems a most fitting tribute. The cache is large enough for very small swag, and was planted with a generous assortment of items. For safe access park on the cement turnout on the east side of Highway 111.
On January 21, 2004 a 55 year old family business that supplied shipping material to farmers burned to the ground in an arson fire. The concrete slab across the highway (now used by an agricultural trucking company) is all that is left of that business built by my father, and later purchased by my husband and I. For weeks after the fire customers and community members came by to ask permission to stand in the burned out frame one last time "just to remember and say goodbye". From early childhood I glued labels on wooden box ends, nailed together those boxes (both by hand and machine), did the bookkeeping, and helped unload railroad cars full of ochra crates and grape box covers from the railroad track just a few feet away, to name just a few of the varied tasks that came with the business. This palm tree, a volunteer from a seed, choose to sprout in an inconvenient place at that business. Two of our employees took it upon themselves to rescue the baby palm, and moved it across the street to its present location. From that day forward, it has survived on its own, with no human help. Fittingly enough, it was also caught in a fire - and sprouted green fronds the very next spring. It is a living symbol of the strength and sheer, dogged, determination of Rewell "Doc" Carlton, my father, who was killed in a car accident in front of the business on July 27 of the same year (8 days after my husband's father died of a heart attack). That it is a lone sentinel, leading ones eyes up from the desert weeds to the beauty of the chocolate mountains in the distance, and the ant-sized cars moving along Interstate 10 (look northeast), is a visual symbol of his spirit and the many gifts he gave to his family, and the community in which he lived.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
abg dhvgr gur erny guvat
Treasures
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