Trace was a healthy, happy, normal and (of course) much loved little boy who enjoyed biking and hiking and fishing, playing in the sand with his brother and his friends with their little cars and Tonka toys. As his grandmother, my tradition has been to give our children their gifts in the form of treasure hunts, which they have always enjoyed. Along the lines of "treasure hunts," our family is just getting started in geocaching. We lost Trace on May 21, 2015, to a rare autoimmune disease that we'd never heard of called hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH). He had just turned 5 years old. We are still trying to come to terms with this. This geocache is placed in his memory by his grandmother and his older brother. The items in it will appeal to children, so in a sense, he is still sort of “with us” and interacting with other kids. If it succeeds that way, it will help his family deal with this unbelievably tragic loss, and we will come to look forward to seeing your responses to our memorial geocache.
DIRECTIONS: Best parking is at the winter x/c skiers Snow Park lot, shown on the map. **Walk across the road** and find the trail going east (left) and follow it to the cache site. You will see blue plastic diamonds periodically along the trail..they denote the winter ski trail--*stay on the trail with the blue diamonds*. At 0.71 mile you will be roughly 30 feet beyond a tree with a plastic blue diamond on it. More importantly, you should be nearly shoulder to shoulder with an 8-10 foot high snag full of woodpecker holes next to the trail. You are now within 20 feet of the cache (5"X5" lock and lock type plastic box). Need another tip? Use the encripted clue! It will be a HUGE help.
Please feel free to choose an item from the cache. We hope you will replace what you take with something similar. Trace really enjoyed playing with little cars. We hope to always have a little car in the cache. If you choose to take a car, we hope you will trade it for one of yours! We will also include a travel bug attached to a little car. We hope to see pictures of it traveling the world in Trace's name.
We encourage you to continue along the trail as far as you like. It is worth the effort..hiking or biking or (in winter) x/c skiing! If you follow the blue diamonds, they will lead you on a nice 5 mile loop, returning the same way you came. There are many lovely picnic sites. Please pack out all your trash. Please keep a close eye on children, especially near the river.
Thank you for visiting our cache and reading our story.