Back in the early 50's we used to ride our bikes to this location. It was in the woods and could not be seen from any roads. It consisted of a small grotto/cave and had a spring that flowed into another creek. It was a fun place to bring a sandwich and sit in the water to stay cool, since there were no air conditioned stores in the area at that time. It is very unique to this part of the county and I don't know of any area around here that is like this.
This area is now located on church/school property but the grotto is maintained as a small shrine with a path leading up to it. For that reason I wouldn't consider it "private" property but I don't think a cache should be hidden here either. That is why I made it a virtual. All I need is an email with the name of the grotto off the sign.
Both the first waypoint and the final virtual cache should be easy to find. However....a little "work" needs to be done to figure out the location of the final cache.
WP1 contains slips of paper containing the barcode for the Zipcode where the cache is located. All the barcodes are the same. Remove one of the pieces of paper and return the rest to it's hiding place.
Now the difficulty! You must decode the barcode and determine which 5 digit Zipcode it represents. The barcode is printed in the standard "USPS Postnet" format. It will be one of the surrounding/ajoining cities. Remember, some cities may have two or more zipcodes and other zipcodes may include more than one city.
For those that try to decode the 5 digit barcode at the Waypoint, make note that the USPS Postnet format includes a single digit checksum at the end, so the last (or 6th) digit should be ignored. IE. If the zipcode was 63011, the barcode would be read as 630119, the last 9 being the checksum. Also note that this is NOT your normal checksum of the previous digits added together. The checksum digit is the total of the 5 digits plus a digit to make the entire sum a multiple of 10. (6+3+0+1+1=11 + 9 = 20)
So your options are:
- Learn the decoding scheme and decode for the zipcode and continue.
- Printout all the barcodes of the surrounding cities and compare those to the one in the container.
- Take the paper home and do an internet search to determine the 5 digit zipcode.
- Trial and error.
When you have figured out the zipcode, we will work with the last 3 digits (63XXX).
1. Take the last 3 digits and reverse their order. IE. 63567, taking the last 3 digits of 567 would become 765.
2. Now add that new number to both the Latitude and Longitude coordinates of N38° 33.725 & W090° 19.346.
Example:
N38° 33.725 W090° 19.346
.765 .765
----------- ------------
N38° 34.490 W090° 20.111
for the coordinates of the actual virtual cache.
Your calculations: (I am not including a checksum this time because the correct zipcode could be figured out pretty quick from the surrounding zipcodes.)
N38° 33.725 W090° 19.346
.___ .___
----------- ------------
N38° . W090° .
WP1 Hours - Dawn to 10PM
Virtual Cache Hours - Use your best judgement (I wouldn't go at 3AM).
It may appear that this is within "walking" distance, (Everything is within walking distance if you have enough time), but I wouldn't recommend it since there are a lot of houses and subdivisions between these two areas.
??