MountainDude's Tale - I'm Not Lost, I'm Geocaching
The Utah sun was baking the top of my hat as I squinted at the scrap of paper in my hand, that darned cipher all blurry with sweat. Cache County, they said. "Mormon Pioneer's Peril," the geocache was called. Fabled, even. They said it had stumped the best of 'em – guys like Jungle Cat, who can sniff out a bison tube from a mile away, and Happy Armadillo, who once found a cache hidden inside a cactus without getting pricked. But me, MountainDude? I once navigated a whiteout in the Uintas using nothing but a half-eaten granola bar and a feeling. This puzzle wasn't gonna break me.
ValleyGnome, that crafty devil, had left this as the final clue. Legend has it she once cracked a puzzle written in some ancient Native American tongue that hadn't been spoken in centuries. They say it was so complex it turned ChipsAhoyStandStill into a puddle of melted chocolate chip goo for a whole afternoon. This looked more like something MousePancakes would scribble during one of his endless ramblings at a geocaching event.
"Alright, let's have a look at ya," I muttered, tapping the string of letters.
CANUWINPEQFEZDAPYEDYBRYSQKSVSGLPZDAPQYMPQBYKISQGRBEKYDQVDGSVSGLPZDAPQYM
PQBYKISBTBYBRZIGSVSHSQVLPDYMPQBYKISDMEAZYLPDYOKAPTLQBZDGXDYMPQBYKISDQYSDYBR
I scratched my beard, the gears in my head turning slower than molasses in January. "Sounds like something Smallg95 would try to say after one too many tacos before noon on a Monday."
Hours crawled by. The sun dipped behind the Wellsville mountains, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple, but I was no closer to the cache. I'd wracked my brain for every Mormon pioneer term I could think of: "History," "Pioneer," "Treasure," "Utah" the list goes on and on. This cipher was a locked safe, and I was fresh out of combinations. My stomach was growling louder than a bear in hibernation, and I could've sworn I heard the faint, mocking giggle of a nano cache near by. I kicked a rock in frustration. "This is why I prefer good old ammo cans!" I grumbled to myself.
Finally, a weak signal flickered on my phone. A new log entry for "Pioneer's Peril" had just popped up. "CacheGoblin" was the name. The comment? "HAHAHA! Someone got tired of the old spot. Good luck, next victim!"
My jaw clenched. A CacheGoblin! The unmitigated gall! Those shadowy figures of geocaching folklore were notorious for one thing: moving caches just to watch us squirm and make playing the game as unfair as possible. Not just a few feet, mind you. We're talking relocating them to the most ridiculous, impossible places. I remember the time one moved a nano from the top of Mount Ogden to inside a plastic flamingo in someone's yard down in Pleasant View. Smallg95, who actually found it, swore the flamingo winked. But knowing Smallg95, that could've just been the heat.
I stared at the cipher again, a cold knot forming in my gut. The key. It had to be the key. I tried "Latter-days," "Ordinance," "Saints," "Testament" still nothing but gobbledygook. I was wandering around this completely unremarkable parking lot, convinced the original coordinates were now about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. I nearly tripped over a concrete parking barrier. Happy Armadillo once told me that CacheGoblins sometimes plant fake caches on parking barriers just to throw you off. The nerve!
Then it hit me, like finding a fresh battery just when your GPS is about to die. The log entry. The CacheGoblin's taunt. "Tired of the old spot." I pulled up the cache page again, my fingers tracing the letters on the page, a new idea sparking in my mind. And then, there it was. A word started to emerge, so blindingly obvious that I slapped my forehead hard enough to make my ears ring.
I scanned the parking lot, a slow grin spreading across my face. "Of course," I chuckled, spotting a small, magnetic box stuck to the bottom of a light pole. "That sneaky CacheGoblin. So simple, yet so infuriating!" Inside, snug as a bug in a rug, was the familiar film canister. I signed the logbook with a triumphant flourish, adding a little note: "Foiled again, you fiendish fiend! MountainDude strikes back!" And then, my signature statement: "And for the record, I wasn't lost. I was just… strategically relocating my search parameters. Yeah, that's it. Geocaching. It's a whole different ballgame." I capped the canister with a satisfied click, the sound echoing in the quiet parking lot, a prelude to the tall tale I'd be telling around the campfire soon enough.