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 fifth 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 welcome sign of the nearby Lynden ballfields) and a bit of research is in order. No need to tear up the landscape, your feet need not leave the lawn/sidewalk/bridge deck to retrieve the cache. Moderate to severe muggle factor. Micro. Bring your own pen/pencil.

The first stop of this cache will place you right under the flight path of the Lynden Municipal Airport--a glance to the sky is bound to spot a small airplane in westbound final approach. The FAA has a unique identifier for each U.S. airport (this one is "#W") and its runway(s) (eastbound and westbound have different designations, eastbound is listed first). Your first stop is found at:
N48º 57.LATDEC W122º 26.LONGDEC
LATDEC = numerical portion of Lynden Municipal Airport's FAA No., plus 299.
LONGDEC = Lynden Municipal Airport westbound runway number, times 19, plus 2.

You are standing at the gateway to Homestead, the development that has forever changed the course (and character) of Lynden. Listen for the purring of lawnmowers trimming bluegrass and fescues where luscious strawberries once ripened in orderly rows and lowing cattle contentedly chewed their cud (at least until dusk when came the murky depths of nightmarish evenings to cloak the misadventures of nefarious teenage cow-tippers).

The micro at the first stop will tell you the decimal minutes for the actual cache. Lynden considers open ditches unsightly, not to mention dangerous (I should know, years ago yours truly was once unceremoniously tossed into this ... but I digress and telling that story may undo years of therapy), and near the final you'll see the new (salmon-friendly?) terminus of one local watercourse that's been undergrounded and "citified."

You can check your coordinates at Geochecker.com.

I (Teese) am a member of the Washington State Geocaching Association. If you are a geocacher in this state, please consider joining the WSGA . . . it's a great way to meet other cachers, access caching resources, and improve the sport. *** Click their icon for more information! ***