Indiana Spirit Quest #199: Thanks for your Service Mystery Cache

The Indiana Spirit Quest series of geocaches will take you to a number of historic cemeteries built by Hoosier Pioneers. In just a year and a half, the quest has grown to over two hundred ten caches hidden in twenty-two Indiana counties, and two Ohio counties, and the hiders have grown to seven cacher teams, six of which are comprised of A Man and His Dog... and one who is a Dog and her Woman. Over 360 cacher teams have logged over 4,200 finds. One cache machine found 102 ISQ caches in a single day.

Photos by LEAD DOG)

This is only the second of over Two Hundred Spirit Quest caches that is not located in a cemetery. This quest will take you to the Veterans National Memorial Shrine located in Ft. Wayne Indiana. While there are no veteran's graves here, there are many memorials and cenotaphs. This cache is dedicated to all Americans, living and dead, who have worn the Nation's Uniform in time of War. This cache will take you on a tour of some of this special place's Memorials, where you can learn about the sacrifices made by the American Soldier in time of war.

The coordinates listed above will not take you to the cache,but will get you close enough to begin your search. The cache is located on a path in the woods at these coordinates:

N41° 05.ABC
W85° 14.DEF

The clues listed below will enable you to decode the coordinates at the site. Don't worry--this is not a large place, everything is in sight...

Our first stop is the large Korean Conflict Memorial. Read about the 1st Presbyterian Church's Korean Congregation. Nearby you will see the brick of Revolutionary War General Anthony Wayne. F in the coordinates above is the number of the row from the top(front) the General's brick is in(. NOTE: "F" = 5)
Our next stop is the Purple Heart Memorial.To figure out what the C in the coordinates is, find the Anthony Wayne Chapter bench. The number of the Chapter is"69C"
Now we will go to the Viet Nam War Memorial.Check out all sides. Then find the Veterans of Foreign Wars bench. To know what the E in the coordinates is, you must know about VFW Post #8DE--but wait--take back 5 to know E.

For the D in the Coordinates to be revealed to you, stay at that same VFW bench. D is the second number in the Post number, so that's why we said #8DE

Now find the rows of white government Civil War headstones. These are not graves--these soldiers died and were buried far from Allen County and their bodies are interred elsewhere. There are two Prisoners of War memorialized here. The number of their Cavalry Regiment minus one equals A in the cache coordinates.

Now we need only the B for our coordinates. Find the Monument to the Revolutionary War soldiers buried in Allen County. B equals the last digit in the year the monument was erected--minus five.

After you find the cache, check out the World War I "MERCI" (Thank You) Rail Road box car in the shelter, a gift from the people of France. Each state in the Union was given one (Legionaires will know about 40 & 8...)

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The cache container is a small plastic jar. BYOP. THIS IS A SACRED PLACE.The cache is not located near a grave... If you find a fallen US flag, please stick it back in the ground. As always, please be respectful, and cache in, trash out.

None genuine without this official SixDogTeam seal. Digital photographs taken by Lead Dog, (C) 2005 by RikSu Outfitters unless otherwise noted.

"Indiana Spirit Quest" is brought to you by the following fellows of GEOISQ*: The SixDogTeam, Kodiak Kid, THE SHADOW, Team Shydog, Rupert2, Torry, ~Mystery Dog~, and Team Tigger International. If you are interested in spreading the Quest to your neck of the woods AND WOULD LIKE TO JOIN US, email SixDogTeam.

*Grand Exalted Order of the Indiana Spirit Quest

** THIS IS A GENUINE INDIANA SPIRIT QUEST CACHE**