The listed coordinates are for the official address of the nearby university. There is street parking near the cache location.
PLEASE NOTE: This is NOT a Dingle Drop !!! It is not suitable for small children, so I didn't place any toys in the initial load. There are lots of briars, but manageable - long pants are recommended. I didn't get any ticks, but it looks like prime tick territory so I recommend DEET spray and leaving dogs at home. There are LOTS of spiders - not quite as bad as in the Forbidden Forest, but I did feel empathy for Frodo Baggins in The Return of the King !!!
WARNING: There is an old barbed-wire fence in the park that can be difficult to see. Entering the park at night is prohibited (see below), and please be very careful in conditions of poor visibility.
You are a high school senior with a 4.0 GPA and you want to earn a Bachelor of Science in Geocaching (BSGC). You have received offers from four universities offering such a program and you want to visit each before deciding which offer to accept.
The universities are all over the USA, so you’ll need to fly to visit them quickly. There are no direct flights so you’ll need to charter a private plane. Each university is close to a major airport (one with a three-letter IATA code). We hope no-one else is on the same itinerary because two of the flight paths intersect, and if a collision occurred the debris would fall right on top of this cache, which is near a fifth university (which doesn’t offer a BSGC, but will award you an honorary Ph.D. [puzzlehiddenus doctor] if you find this cache).
University A
Your tour guide for this campus is a large young man named Jack.
This public university takes its name from a nearby bay, which was named by sailors from a ship the name of which contains the name of UnivB’s state. A European capital city has a university named for the brother of the person after whom this bay was named. A student publication is named for a bird that is also found around UnivD.
The former name of the city would have been pleasing to residents of UnivC’s city in the period when it was changed, but the residents of UnivB’s city would not have liked it. The local semi-professional baseball team’s name would be appropriate for UnivD’s town (where the items in question are a regional delicacy). A certain crop grown in several places within the city limits is used by some people in a manner similar to that used for another crop for which UnivB’s state is well known. This could explain the fog that commonly envelops the airport here and which might delay or divert your flights.
University B
Your tour guide for The Grounds of this school is a young man who gives the impression this is not very important.
The annual football game against a school from an adjacent state is the longest-running rivalry in this half of the country. A varsity team (in the same sport as the record held by UnivD) had a perfect season a few years back as they added to the school’s list of NCAA championships (but none in football). The current athletic director was an assistant basketball coach at UnivC. You might decide to look elsewhere because it is claimed no one ever graduates from this university.
The city is named for the wife of a king whose son acted as Prince Regent in the latter part of the king’s life. The son’s title before he took the throne is currently held by a man whose first name is the masculine origin of the queen’s first name.
A former resident of the city was a leader of an overland expedition to UnivA’s coast. Another resident is a famous author – the main character in one of his novels is a professor at UnivB, and the main character in another is a student at UnivC. Yet another resident was drafted by Major League Baseball’s newest team. The surrounding county contains a small town whose current name would have pleased those who opposed the change to UnivA’s town’s name (they would have nixed the old name).
University C
Your tour guide for this campus is a young man named Daniel. Watch out for poison ivy as you walk.
The only private university on your tour, it has one of the largest university library systems in the world. It is second in all-time wins in NCAA Division 1 in the sport it created. At the annual game against a regional rival a few years ago, a clever prank was perpetrated, copying one of the greatest pranks in college history that occurred in the same state as UnivA. The sports stadium was the first natural one of its type and its design will bowl you over. The first U.S. games in a cold-weather sport were played here and at a university in the same state as UnivD. A ruddy Swedish actress played a graduate from here whose name was the same as the queen associated with UnivB (but it may not translate well).
University D
Your tour guide for this campus is a young man named Samuel.
This public university holds the NCAA record for consecutive wins in a sport that is most popular at the college level in this region of the country.
The city has a sister city of the same name in a European country; the sister city has a cathedral with a tall spire and a sister city of the same name in another state in the U.S. (although the two U.S. cities are not sisters). The capital of an African country had the same name, but the city’s name was changed after the country changed its name. An Australian city of the same name had a large munitions factory during WWII, as did a suburb of the same name in another Australian state. The local professional baseball team’s name would just as appropriate for the team near UnivA – the two teams could swap names and be just as appropriate.
Flight paths
Once you have discovered the identity of each university, find the closest major airport to it. Note: For the university that is farthest from the other three, the closest major airport is in a town formerly named Minor.
When you have all four airport codes, go to GPS Visualizer and enter all 6 pairings. Select “Google Maps” format (see note below) and click “Draw map”. The intersection point of the two routes that cross is the reference point for the cache, expressed in decimal degrees. Some time in 2010 the reference point returned by GPS Visualizer moved - no idea why. The cache location is offset from the reference point, so subtract 0.00063° from the latitude and subtract 0.00089 from the longitude. (The longitude is negative, so subtracting makes it “more negative”. The cache is southwest of the reference point.)
Note: Selecting “Google Earth” format gives a slightly different result, with the intersection point well away from the cache’s general area. The same problem occurs when using a GPSr to plot the intersection. If you continually double-click the intersection point in the Google Map until it is at the highest zoom level, the coordinates shown are accurate and will show the correct location for the reference point when entered into Google Earth and your GPSr. (I only found the differences after spending several hours finding flight paths and writing clues – sorry if it’s a hassle!)
Check your solution at GeoChecker. You can enter coordinates in decimal degrees [DD.DDDDD]. (It only accepts DD MM.MMM when creating a check, and Google Maps only gives DD.DDDDD, so I selected the 25' "fuzzy" option to allow for any minor conversion errors.)
Please respect private property. Park just off the main road on the street where the reference point is and enter the park from the main road.
The cache is a 1.2 quart plastic latch box, 7-3/8''L x 5-5/8''W x 3-1/4''H, clear with light blue latch handles, similar to this but half as deep.
The cache is placed in accordance with FCPA guidelines. These guidelines include the following:
- Geocachers must abide by all Park Authority rules, regulations, and other restrictions. This specifically includes park access times. Unless posted otherwise, all Park Authority parks are open from Dawn to Dusk. Night Caching in Park Authority parks is expressly forbidden.
Congratulations to cphug184 for the FTF !