LATicia LONgoria and the Quest for Concentricity
The cache is not at the posted coordinates.
Please solve the puzzle below to find the actual cache location.
At an early age, Miss Laticia Longoria came to the realization that, given her name's inclusion of "Lat" and "Lon", the popular abbreviations for latitude and longitude, there could be only one hobby or sport to which she was exquisitely suited, that being, of course, geocaching, a realization so profound that she lost no time in legally changing her name to LATicia LONgoria in order to emphasize the critical bits. Cache on, LATicia!
LATicia has created a puzzle cache for you. It involves Lats and Lons, a quest, some concentric circles, a mystery town somewhere on Earth and eight of her favorite worldwide caches:
#3 Kingston Rails to Trails
Nova Scotia
Buckets and Bridges
Virginia
La Fantana
Romania
latorrecilla2
Spain
Phnom Banan Temple
Cambodia
R.S.16.PARC INCONNU
Quebec
Swallow Tail City
Idaho
The Stumped Cow
California
LATicia is eager for you to solve her puzzle, and in much less time than the ridiculous number of hours she spent in constructing it. Therefore, she is providing a quick step-by-step solution strategy for you. It's a good thing she is a lot nicer than the official CO of this puzzle!
1 - Do some transpositiony sorts of things with the Lats and Lons (intercache, not intracache).
2 - Trial and error and more trial. Good thing Google Earth is your friend!
3 - These ARE the concentric circles you are looking for. "Concentric" and "circle" may be pushing it a bit for some of these. Hey, do you have any idea how hard it is to find these things?? LATicia adds, "You ARE looking for a target, a subdivision, crosshairs and a crater. You are NOT looking for a roundabout."
4 - Aha! Got it! There's another one! That's it - got all four!!
5 - Record the coordinates of the approximate center of each circle.
6 - Given these four worldwide locations, the next step is to find the intersection of lines between them. LATicia believes there is only one possible intersection.
7 - Rather than actually drawing lines, you can use a calculator by clicking on this link:
Intersection of Lines Calculator
8 - Enter the four locations as Points A, B, C and D. Enter them in order of increasing North latitude. Ignore the "Angle" entries and click "Calculate".
9 - The tool assumes a line between Points A and B and another from C to D.
10 - Plug the intersection coordinates into Google Earth.
11 - Identify the name of the mystery town you are now in.
12 - Enter the town's name into this Checker and if your answer is correct, you will receive the cache coordinates.
Don't hesitate to contact me if you need any assistance or recommendations.
Hiking to the Cache
This is one of many puzzle caches on a beautiful hike from Coffenbury Lake in Fort Stevens to Delaura Beach Road. You can park at either end. If starting from the lake, parking is at the posted coordinates for Elvira the Elemonator (State Park fee or pass required). If starting from Delaura Beach Road, parking is at the posted for Pacific Insecticross (no fee).
The one-way distance is two miles and the terrain is almost all flat with a few small hills near the lake.