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The First Geocacher? Mystery Cache

This cache has been archived.

yogiabb: The cache is gone. The tree it was hidden in is gone, the woods that the tree was in is gone, vanished, with the help of some bulldozers. At church this morning I looked off in this general direction and it looked pretty barren so after lunch I came back and inspected it and the land has been bulldozed flat and whats left of most of the trees piled up.
Anyway, I don't think that anybody lost any travel bugs. I also appreciate everybody that took the time to find this.

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Hidden : 6/27/2006
Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
1 out of 5

Size: Size:   regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:

Could Francis Asbury have been the first Geocacher?

The listed coordinates are not where the cache is, they are the location of an equestrian statue of Francis Asbury on the grounds of a Methodist Church named after the man. It is not necessary to go look at the statue to find this cache but if you are into waypointing there is this statue and an adjoining fountain that I don't think have been listed yet. Francis Asbury was born in England in 1745 and came to America as a preacher and traveled widely presenting the gospel. He was the first American Bishop of the Methodist Church. He traveled widely, about 6000 miles a year on horseback. He had awesome work habits. He awoke at 4am every day. He also insisted that all ministers study the Bible for at least 5 hours a day and followed that example himself. He was the only Methodist preacher who didn't leave North America during the Revolutionary War. He continued to preach and never renounced his English citizenship. He died in the United States in 1816.

But back to geocaching. He never did make it to Oklahoma and certainly he didn't have a GPSr and there were know satellites anyway. In addition he doesn’t seem like a man much taken with slacker sports. Also, there were no laptops, pdas, cell phones, back packs, walkie-talkies, bug spray, magnetic key holders, baggies, internet, geocaching.com or any other essential equipment and supplies necessary for the sport. If he did do any caching he would have to use some sort of celestial navigation. If you wanted to go find this cache like Francis Asbury might have, instead of giving coordinates, he might have said something such as:

"We cannot waste any time on this trivial activity but if you insist, do it quickly. Be at the statue at exactly 2 minutes 38 seconds after 2PM (CDST) on July 4, 2007. Follow your shadow at a moderate pace for 4 minutes, 36 seconds, get the cache, open it, trade whatever trinkets that you have, sign the log, put the cache back in place, and return to work."

If you can’t be there on the prescribed day and time then you will have to do some calculating (or for us cheaters, web surfing). Even if you are there at the right time and date, please don’t walk through yards and houses so you are going to have to do some ciphering anyway.

Oh, a moderate pace is equal to 8064 furlongs per fortnight.

You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

uggc://nn.hfab.anil.zvy/qngn/qbpf/NygNm.ugzy (abgr gur jro cntr qbrfa'g hfr qnlyvtug fnivatf gvzr.) Zvyrf cre qrt yngvghqr = 69.167 zvyrf/qrterr, jbeyqjvqr Zvyrf cre qrterr ybatgvghqr = 55.957 zvyrf/qrterr, va Ghyfn nern. Pnpur vf va n qrnq gerr va zbjrq svryq.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)