Goodhope, Good Luck Traditional Geocache
Curious Joe: Had fun with this one for a dozen years, but I've decided to archive it. Pretty sure it's been gone all year.
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Within Pine Ridge Park lies Goodhope Pond. On some years, during a very dry summer, some of the pond dries up. My son Super Scoob and I took advantage of the great summer we had this year (2006) and by mid-September it had dried up enough to trek out across the mud and tie a purple Nalgene style sports bottle with some goodies around a branch of a fallen tree in the middle of the pond. Then we waited for it to rain...
You'll need some kind of watercraft to get to the cache unless you want to hope and wait for a dry enough summer (2007 and 2008 were not) or on the rare occasion the pond freezes over. You'll have to carry your boat or inflate it when you get there. I do think a canoe or kayak is safest due to the shallow water and snags. When too shallow or muddy in mid-summer this cache might rate a "6" in difficulty and be unreachable. That mud really sucks! You might need a different kind of lifeline then. We hid a unactivated Snow Wolf coin for the FTF (Congrats, OBE!). Please post pictures of your exploits! Since we live close by, drop me an email beforehand and if I can I will come by and laugh...I mean give moral support, or help if you need it.
OBE proved it was possible to wade in the water and find it (in November, nonetheless!). I saw him shivering and bleeding afterward.
Congrats to GeoEskimo 8/3/09, who became the second person to do the cache without a boat and to Towtrkdug who survived on 9/25/09.
I have a suspicion the cache may have been done on ice in December '09.
In Sept 2008 I replaced the cache with a green WSGA water bottle. However during the 3/1/09 expeditions, the old container was found as well. It was more watertight than the new one and less conspicuous from the shore, so it has be reinstated as the cache and the green one removed.
4/11/10 update. Crs98 discovered where the cache was attached, but no cache. It has been replaced by a green Nalgene bottle.
4/26/15 update. GeoRascals replaced the cache. Cache is now a metal black water bottle.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Tbbq Yhpx!