"It's the same thing your whole life: Clean up your room. Stand up straight. Pick up your feet. Take it like a man. Be nice to your sister. Don't mix beer and wine, ever. Oh yeah, don't drive on the railroad tracks."
There is no cache at the posted coordinates. This is a mystery/puzzle cache that must be solved to find the correct coordinates. It should not need to be said, but just in case, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GO NEAR ACTIVE RAILROAD TRACKS.
"Watch out for that first step. It's a doozie." - Let's take this general area shown above as Point A
There is a geocache hidden within 2 miles of the posted coordinates. - Let's take the actual cache location as Point B
Let's ignore the difference in degrees between points A and B, since the North and West degrees for point B are obvious.
Adding 10.576 to the North minutes of Point A gets the North minutes of Point B
Adding 5.197 to the West minutes of Point A gets the West minutes of Point B
Now you know where the cache is really located!
Some helpful tips for getting an accurate set of coordinates for the checker:
- First, be sure you can correctly view the animated gif image at the top of the puzzle text. If not, be sure to use a computer with a modern web browser or a smart phone with a capable browser to view this cache page. (A computer works best, as you will see if you read on.)
- Do some research to find out about the location shown in the scene on this cache page. An historical marker/plaque has actually been placed at this site (around Point A).
- Drive around in Google street view to best match up the scene once you have located the general area through your research. (August 2017 was the street view version used when this cache was made.)
- If you need more visual context to make the match, watch the full scene between Phil and Ned which shows more of this area. YouTube has a lot of good clips available of this scene.
- With the correct Google street view of the scene, note the URL in the address bar at this location; it will start with "https://www.google.com/maps/@"; after the "@" (and before the second comma) are coordinates of the view.
- Convert these coordinates to the form used by geocaching.com (now you have Point A), and then do the math of minutes as indicated above.
On its release, Groundhog Day was a modest success and garnered generally positive reviews. It gained stronger appreciation among critics and film historians over time, and is now often listed among the best comedy films ever. It further entered into the public consciousness, where the term "Groundhog Day" can represent a situation that seems to repeat over and over in government and military arenas, as well as influencing other entertainment. In 2006, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, "Groundhog Day (film)")
Since it is a Green-Hippo yearly tradition to view this film on or around Groundhog Day, and because it has become "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", we present the second year of a Groundhog Day-themed geocache featuring an aspect of the film.
Happy Groundhog's Day, woodchuck-chuckers!
A geo-checker is provided for you to verify your solution. Parking suggestions will also be provided once your solution is correct. The checker's response text will also alert you if you are going to be searching in state game lands where orange is required to be worn during the primary hunting seasons, except on Sunday, when there is no hunting. This geocache is NOT located even within 500 feet of any railroad tracks.
A big thank you to Taggin' Along for the container for this cache. The container was received as a gift from the geocacher as part of Profbrad's 2017 Bison Exchange (GC7CVPQ).
A congratulations on FTF goes to ted28285 and r.e.s.t.seekers. Way to "...get up and check that hog out there!" That is the second year in a row. History has a way of repeating itself...
Don't forget to check out GC82Z9X, 2019's Groundhog Day puzzle if you happened to have not logged it yet. (The 2017 puzzle is now archived, but it should still be solved to help find the cache that goes with the newer 2019 puzzle.)
This is a Green-Hippo cache