Quiet Lynden is situated in the center of Whatcom County's coastal plain and serves as the hub of local agriculture. Lynden has been graced with a distinctive Dutch ethnic presence for over a hundred years; we see the effects of that presence on local dairy farms (most cattle are Holstein Frisian, a breed developed in Holland),in land features (lowlands protected by an extensive diking system, a re-routed Nooksack River), and in commercial architecture (including several windmills); not to mention the walking/biking paths along and across local watercourses (our functional equivalent of canals). Lynden is bisected by Fishtrap Creek, so named for a Native American salmon harvesting installation once located near the site of the present Lynden City Park, and it naturally garners no little local attention, as evidenced by some eight pedestrian bruggen found as it wends its way through town. This cache is the first in a series of six designed to acquaint you just a bit with Lynden and its bruggen -- followed by a seventh final cache found using the decimal coordinates of all six of the series, so keep track of them.

Don't just hop right into your cachemobile, the posted coordinates are NOT the cache location (they'll only take you to the downstream point where SR539 crosses Fishtrap Creek) and a bit of research is in order. Every US jurisdiction with a watercourse is specifically identified with a Community Identifier Number (CID) to coordinate flood insurance and to enable FEMA's (eventual) assistance in time of emergency. The cache coordinates are:
N48º 56.LATDEC W122º 28.LONGDEC
LATDEC = First 3 digits of Lynden's 6-digit CID, less 404
LONGDEC = Last 3 digits of Lynden's 6-digit CID, plus 635

The flat area just up the hill is the site of a former slaughterhouse (rumored to have discharged blood and "other stuph" into the stream below ... hence the subtitle), indicative of both the widespread presence of local dairy and the changing face of local agriculture. Just across the street from it is the former manufacturing site of the "Whale of a Sprinkler" a Lynden inventor's self-propelled lawn sprinkler that retraced its supply hose and (at least in that era ... I guess you had to be there) revolutionized lawn irrigation.

Container is a micro, so BYOP.
PLEASE, PLEASE remember your stealth skills.

You can check your coordinates at:

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