The Long Road to Searles Valley Traditional Cache
The Long Road to Searles Valley
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This is my first cache ever placed.
It is a quick 'park & grab'.
There is nothing fancy in there......... I am just a lowly physics student on food stamps (yes, really), so I don't have the means for awesome prizes.
However there is a cool handmade item that says "first to find", and there are other (not as cool) handmade items for subsequent cachers.
As you go into this area you are entering geology left over from an earlier epoch in the formation of the Earth's landscape. Take a minute to look around or pick up a rock.
If you really want a geological (and geographical) treat, hit up Trona's Gem-O-Rama next year..... and the main trips you want to go on are the "mud hole" and "brine pool" trips (cheap-- $10 per car).
You will collect HUGE hanksite (found in only 2 places on Earth) crystals in perfect octogon shape, pick pink halite from brine pools (this is salt colored red by the presence of halophilic bacteria-- an extremeophile studied by NASA astrobiologists, and found in only 3 places on Earth). You will walk on a lake bed made of pure salt.... rock hard and seeming to go down for miles (this was once under an inland sea). You will dig through rich, black, sticky mud; perhaps the richest in the world, as it contains 93 of the world's known 117 elements.
..........and you will see the irreversable and devastating damage done to the environment by the massive chemical plant, the corruption of San Bernardino County who lets it all happen, and the destruction of a tiny town by economic depression, undesireable living conditions, and the meth wars of the 90's.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Vg'f va n ohfu, jvgu n srj ebpxf ba gbc gb pbaprny. Vs lbh ner ybbxvat, lbh jvyy svaq vg.
Treasures
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