Three words I wouldn't use to describe this location: full, venturing, and loving.
The cache is not at the posted coordinates, though it is nearby.
Today I am going to show you how solve a classic puzzle. ValerieSeaker needs a Difficulty 1, Terrain 2.5 hide, and this spot fits the bill as far as terrain. Bring your snowboots, Val. And call me if you need a human crutch. I also happen to be hiding this on a day that Glenn.Fish needs for his birthday challenge. And I needed to get rid of some stuff. So this is a three words birds, one stone kinda situation. It started as a quick visit to see AlaskanBev's "Keep it in the Mainframe." One of my students (Hi JBBAfan) visited here in October and found that the container had slipped too far into the tree to retrieve. This cache and the one next to it, "Oh, I love quickies!" are the two closest to my stomping grounds that I haven't attempted yet-- mostly because when I drove by this fall to check it out, I saw a cute black bear lumbering away up the hill and decided to wait for him to go to sleep. I checked out GZ for "I Love Quickies" and determined that I didn't want to try this terrain in the snow. So I am not sure when I will be able to look for IHQ, thanks to the snow/hibernation schedule overlap issue. But I did wander over and do some research on Mainframe. I will return soon with the proper TOTT. Anyway... I thought this little empty spot in the map deserved a cache. What did I have on hand? Well, a lot of odds and ends and nothing very school-appropriate.
You see, I've been keeping an eye on this spot for a long time. I used to walk back here often, and I noticed that there was a season where someone was clearly driving to work around here each day, and just before turning into their parking lot, they would pop open a shooter of Fireball, drink it down, and toss the empty bottle out thier passenger window. That's the story I came up with anyway, since there were always empty fireball shooters here and the number grew each fall until the snow would come. Eventually, I brought a trash bag and cleaned them up as the snow melted in the spring of 2023, and I guess whoever was working here either started making better choices while operating machinery, or got fired, because the bottles stopped appearing that summer. Let me know if you find fresh fireball when you visit this location so I can arrange some CITO.
Now on top of this, I found a really cool container online and ordered it right away, but then realized that I needed to get it hidden, since usually I keep caches on the docket in my classroom. But schools are really sensitive about gun violence (obviously), so I needed to get this metaphorically and physically off my desk as soon as possible. You'll see what I mean when you find the cache. It's nothing terrible, just kind of a hot mess. Now what to put inside? I recently replaced "Bad Driver," and some of the items that I ordered in a pack of 12 were not appropriate for that cache, for their intended use, or for decoration in my classroom. So those are going in as swag. To top it off, I had some little dumpster fire tokens in my backpack, so I tossed those in there, too. This felt appropriate for a cache of odds, ends, fireball, and inappropriateness. In short, this isn't a super kid-friendly cache. You can still bring kids here, but the stuff inside might not be as funny to them as to you. None of it is graphically violent or sexual, I promise. Just off color.
This all adds up to a real mess of a container. And an intro to puzzle caching.
Here's lesson #1: Pretty much nothing above is going to help you find the cache (unless you also know where the fireball was getting tossed). Oftentimes, puzzle cachers leave a bunch of red herrings or just straight-up junk on the cache page to confuse you. So you can ignore almost everything above this sentence. Almost.
Lesson #2: Learn how to use the solution checker. It's below. When you think you know the coordinates, plug them in there before going into the field. When you think you have this puzzle solved (and yes, you can solve it from your phone), plug the coordinates into the solution checker.
Lesson #3: There are lots of ways to talk about coordinates. Here's a list of tools people have used.
Google Plus Codes
Degrees to Decimal Converter
PlaceKey
What Three Words
Map Codes
That's it. That's the lesson. You have the tools you need, and I believe in you.
This Cache was hidden by a Sourdough Member of GeocacheAlaska!
