Life's A Beach Mystery Cache

If you had been in this area 100 years ago the geography of Lake Washington would have been very different from what you see today. In 1917 when the ship canal was opened connecting Lake Washington with Lake Union and Puget Sound the level of Lake Washington was dropped by nine feet. The area where the cache is located would have been in what was then called Dunlap Slough and would probably have been under water. The hill east of the cache was called Pritchard's Island hence the name of the park here. The beach here is no longer maintained as a bathing beach by Seattle Parks. I remember when I was a mere lad coming here to learn to swim. I never did learn, but that is another story.

Prior to the lowering of the lake level Lake Washington drained to Puget Sound through the Black River which flowed into the Green River forming the Duwamish River. The name Duwamish means many colors. If you go to GCGA4H Uncle Fred's Lookout you would be looking down on the area that the Black River flowed through and close to the area where the Cedar River joined the Black. GC5602 Renton Riparian is located on the banks of what is left of the Black River. The Cedar River flowed into the Black and it was diverted to flow into Lake Washington. GCN053 Cedar River Trail is located where the Cedar now flows into Lake Washington.

Pritchard's Island Beach Park used to be home to a nursery for either Seattle City Light or Seattle Parks. In 1996 that garden was removed and the land has been regraded to match what it was just after the lake was lowered. There appears to be some dispute over who used the land as a nursery. The Seattle Parks history shows Seattle City Light, but the history posted at the park says Seattle Parks operated the nursery. Slowly the land is being restored with native plants. There is a walking trail that goes into the natural area. It is mostly bark covered and easily walked. It does not go quite all the way around as indicated on the posted map.

To make this cache a bit more interesting I have encoded the coordinates. The cypher is one of the more basic ones and is not designed to be really hard, but you may need to do some googling to figure it out.

FNEX XWEN OTPS OODT UHOE NOOW RRIV ENTO SENE TESN EETN WFEI VOSS OIVN ENII TVEE

Please take care to hide it exactly as you found it. The FTF prize is an unregistered Washington GeoCoin which was claimed by fishiam.

Note added 7/7/05 The cypher I used is not as easy to google as I thought since I had the wrong name for it. My original hint was designed to use that name. It turns out than Dan Brown in his book "Digital Fortress" used this code and called it a Caesar Cypher. It is not a Caesar Cypher. I am adding a hint that may help a bit.