Congratulations, SM325! 10K Finds! Traditional Cache
Congratulations, SM325! 10K Finds!
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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A not too long of a walk on the Ghost Hedge Trail in Sycamore State Park. Placed with permission of ODNR via the Volunteer Geocaching Coordinator for Hueston Woods and Sycamore State Parks.
SM325 is nearing 10,000 finds as I'm typing/editing this. That's an achievement for anybody but he did it while dealing with a couple of extra obstacles. (The non-extra obstacle is of course that when you have that many finds you have to drive farther and farther away to keep being able to find things. I have no idea how the people with even more finds are doing it.) He managed to get there in spite of fighting a major personal battle that I'm very glad he won. Even with the help he got from a magnificently amazing coinhabitant (why, you might say she's Mrs. Amazing!) and a friend who apparently does all his navigating for him, that was an amazing feat to pull off.
In light of that achievement, there is something inside the cache inside of a brown envelope and the envelope is inside of a baggie. The envelope says "For SM325." That means that if you aren't SM325 or acting on his behalf, please don't take that something. (It would be really spiffy if SM325 was the first person to see that brown envelope.)
If things went right with the obstacle course I'm negotiating to get this typed, there should be trail head coordinates somewhere or other here. They're for the Ghost Hedge Trail. I took a picture of the sign for that trail:
That trail head is very near a parking lot. If you're on Wolf Creek Pike and navigate to the trail head you should have no trouble spotting the parking lot. Once you're on the trail, it will eventually make a sharp turn to the right. Before you get to that sharp right turn, you'll notice a trail going off to the left and a grassy/dirt road going off to the right. Do NOT turn left or right there. Just keep going straight until the trail you're on forces you to go right.
Most of the terrain rating is for the last 4 or so feet, when you (barely) leave the trail. And that gets me to the other obstacle that makes SM325's getting to 10K so amazing. He professes to be an armchair geocacher. And he did it 10,000 times! I really need to ask him how he does that. However, although it's not a long walk, I'm suspecting that he might have to get out of his armchair for this one. It's not quite as close to the parking lot as I would've liked. (Ironically, it was a cache of SM325's near the parking lot that caused me that little issue.) I'm hoping I didn't accidentally go overboard with the walk.
And although I put a bunch of stuff in there, I forgot to put in a writing instrument.
I suggest being patient with your electronic playmates. There are woods involved. I let mine play two weeks before I actually placed the cache. I tested her numbers both times and both times she did the same thing: her performance oscillated between mediocre and very good.
Please watch for muggles popping up on the trail and PLEASE cover it up when you're finished. It is anything but muggle-proof. Most importantly, if you see it on approach while walking down the trail, please try to fix that before you leave. (Thank you in advance.)
And lastly, unless you're camping, being in there after 11 P.M. is a no-no. (And I don't know that they want campers roaming around looking for geocaches then either.)
A Note About Travel Items for People Who May Not Be Familiar With Them
In addition to trade items (commonly known as "swag"), geocaches quite often contain travel bugs or geocoins. These items are not for general trading. They are "travel items." They are the property of other people and their goal is to be taken from one cache by geocachers and then placed in other caches, i.e., to travel from cache to cache. There are two types of travel items, travel bugs and geocoins. These items must be logged separately from logging the find for the geocache. There's a "special process" for that. A travel bug is usually some type of trinket (such as a small stuffed animal) with what looks like a dog tag attached to it. Sometimes it's just the dog tag. Either way, the dog tag will have a string of letters or numbers on it. Geocoins will also have such a string imprinted on or engraved into them. That string is called the "tracking number." It is important for logging the travel item as it's retrieved from and placed in geocaches. Please watch out for such items and do not take them if you don't intend on helping them travel to another geocache or do not wish to learn the logging procedure.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Srj srrg abegu bs genvy, ovt snyyra gerr