"Turning lemons into lemonade". An expression that conveys the experience of turning a bad experience...one that could leave a sour taste in your mouth...into a sweet and pleasant one.
One type of "sour experience" one can have in geocaching is dashing out, blood and adrenaline pumping, in a quest to be the first to find a newly-published geocache...only to find that the cache is not really there. I've sometimes gone out 3 or 4 times to vie for an FTF on a cache, only to be repeatedly faced with the FTDNF, STDNF, TTDNF, etc. What a bummer!
Sometimes, though, as you search for a cache, you spot locations that you think would have been an EXCELLENT place for the missing cache to have been stashed. And what better way to turn a location that was a "lemon encounter" into a "lemonade encounter" than to hide a cache in the very same area where you'd previous faced ignominious defeat?
So, welcome to the "Lemons Into Lemonade" series. I've hidden both of these geocaches in locations where I'd vied for an FTF but the cache wasn't really there -- both were published on the same day, both turned out to be missing from the get-go. Now, however, the missing cache has been archived, thus freeing up the coordinates for an "LiL" cache. These spots will now turn into pleasant experiences...for me, because I've had the pleasure of making them Gamer hides, and, hopefully, for you, as they could now become new smilies on your geocaching maps!
The location for "Lemons Into Lemonade #1" was actually my intended final for a Gamer puzzle I planned to create a few years ago, but that never panned out. When my "lemon-experience" cache appeared here, I felt a certain sense that, "Hey, this is MY spot!", so when the cache was archived, I felt compelled to finally make use of it!
As long as I was "lemonadifying" one cache in the area, I figured I might as well continue on my journey and "lemonadify" its sibling cache a few blocks away....leading to "Lemons Into Lemonade #2".
The cache write-up equally addresses LiL #1 and #2. The only difference between the cache write-ups is in the additional hints. While the "additional hints" are different for each of these two caches, they each provide clues for BOTH hides. Your job will be to figure out...which part of the hints applies to which of the caches?
I hope all seekers earn a sweet smiley! Good luck...and cache on!