UpTown History Wherigo Cache

This Wherigo will take you on a 3.5 km self guided loop of the historic industrial buildings of uptown Waterloo. All the buildings you will visit have been designated as heritage buildings by the municipal heritage committee and the info provided along the way will provide a glimpse into the heart of Waterloo in the mid 1800's to the early 1900's. A physical cache awaits at the end once all zones are visited.

The cache is NOT at the posted coordinates but within 1 kilometre.

Cartridge can be found here.

For my first Wherigo I decided to start easy with a simple zone to zone self-guided tour taking a little more than 1 hour to complete by foot. You will be provided with some historical information for each building you visit and then will be asked to answer some simple questions from the clues around you. A correct answer will activate and provide you with your next zone. Once all the zones have been visited you will be provided with the final location of the geocache. Due to the nature of the downtown urban area I had to scale this down to a micro container. This tour begins in a large public parking lot. Parking is free for the first 2 hours which will allow you more than enough time to complete the tour. And please make sure you have the latest version of the cartridge before you head out.

At each zone I encourage you to stop and admire the differing architectural styles around the uptown area. You will visit differing examples of Georgian Mennonite, Classic Revival, Romanesque, Victorian, and Industrial styles, each with their own unique nuances.

The entire tour is completed on public sidewalks so the terrain is very easy and should be clear in the winter except for the final which may or may not be wheelchair accessible due to snow. On a safety note, please take great care crossing any city streets during the tour. I encourage everyone to only cross a street when it is safe to do so, preferably at traffic lights or intersections with marked pedestrian crossings. This Wherigo can be completed at night with less muggle activity to contend with, but will be more difficult to spot some of the answers. So pick your poison.

A big thank you goes out to cache4pat for the tutelage and for beta testing. I had a few false starts on my first coding attempts and Pat helped me get going in the right direction. This Wherigo was inspired by his Rarely Noticed Art, which I loved, so I adapted the zone to zone idea for a Waterloo historical tour.

Also, the old public domain photographs within the cartridge are courtesy of the Waterloo Public Library via the Our Ontario Project.