I first saw this area while house shopping. The area for this virtual cache is adjacent to the property we looked at. This is in my current neighborhood, and I never even knew it was there.
The 8-acre, city-owned property contains several vacant stone buildings dating to the 1940s. Although the former ranch site technically is open to the public, it is hidden in a ravine surrounded by homes in the Bridlewood Americana neighborhood near Lake Poway. There are no signs announcing its presence, and relatively few people know about it.
The site was written up in the local paper over a year ago and WAS available on the web, but the links went stale recently and the articles seem to be lost forever -- the mystery grows :)
Most of the buildings are surrounded by fences so you can see the ruins, but not actually touch and feel them -- all but one building anyway. This is the prize -- hidden from the other buildings. They have finished construction/destruction and the fences are down!
If you are standing exactly at the coordinates for the virtual cache, you should be in the middle of a room and see something at your feet. To qualify as a find, you must send me either a description of the item at your feet, or a photo of the item. No longer a virtual! This has been revised to be a traditional cache. You have to find the stash now.
Finding your way in is real tricky. So as not to violate anyones private land, park on Summer Sage Road at N33 00.558, W117 01.542. From there the path is clear.
I would like to someday make this a regular cache, but right now they are still working in the area cleaning up the surrounding land. I'm afraid any cache I try to hide right now will become lost. As soon as things settle, I'll place a "real" cache. Until then, this virtual cache will have to do.IT IS A TRADITIONAL CACHE as of 13 June 2003. The lat/lon have been slightly revised to the new location. Hey, the well was full of rocks and stuff -- I couldn't hide the cache there.
Start-off Swag Includes:
- Sacagawea Dollar Coin
- 4 State quarters -- one each from 1999 to 2002
- Assorted frogs (lots of various kinds including 1 finger puppet and 2 sticky frogs for throwing against glass)
- Padres MADD button, a new ballpark button, and a Hard Rock Cafe button
- Souvenir squished penny
- A genuine collectable Frog Doode mini post card -- #1 of 9 in the San Diego Zoo series.
The box is a Glad plastic kind about 6x4x4, containing the swag and an official Frog Doode bobble eyes log book.