Hi, big people! My name is Nicholas, and I'm what you would call a gnome. No, we don't live in people's gardens (the flamingos would probably eat us). We live in the woods. I think we're a lot like you, just much, much smaller. And I have a story to tell you.
I woke up one morning not that long ago to the most horrible of rackets. The ground shook like the mountain was falling. It sounded like the world was coming to an end! I dressed and ran out the door of my tree and up the hillside to see if I could find out what was going on.
I'd never seen anything like this before! Some kind of mechanical beast the size of a small gnome city was rumbling past, moving faster than the fastest gnome could run and belching smoke into the sky. I ran back inside and slammed and locked the door.
"The big people have declared war on us", I told my family, breathing hard. "They're sending in the heavy machinery."
"Oh, stop being paranoid", said my older son. "It's just another earthquake."
"Not so!" I cried. "That was no earthquake!"
My son rolled his eyes as if to say "old people... what can you expect?" But I knew what I'd seen.
Well, this sort of activity went on for many months, maybe even years. It became evident that the machines had no interest in us, but the noise and the ground shaking (not to mention the stink in the air) were getting quite annoying. They finally seemed to complete whatever they were working on a few months ago, and life slowly returned to normal.
Anyway, I spoke to one of you big people earlier today. He called himself a "geocacher", and said he had nothing to do with all the construction. He requested my permission to install a geocache in a location near my home. Once he explained what this "geocache" thing is, it sounded interesting, and we're naturally curious anyway. So I let him install it.
It's not right at my front door, but at the abandoned front door of my neighbor who moved away when all the noise began. (He was a grouch anyway, so I don't mind too much that he left!) I don't believe anybody would have any trouble finding it, although there are a lot of loose boulders (well, they're boulders to us!) on the hillside just below the trail so many of you use, so even big people should be careful approaching this geocache. There are also a few scattered poison plants in the area, so watch for those as well, although neither of us saw any right near the geocache.
Incidentally, I never had any idea what all these machines had been doing, where they had been going, or why, until my new geocacher friend showed me this: https://www.sjwater.com/our-company/news-media/water-blogged/lake-ranch-improvement-project
So all of this activity was just to reinforce the big water storage area. That seems like a good idea so I guess I don't mind that so much, but somebody could have WARNED me at least!
I don't want to seem anti-social, and I would ask you to stop by and say hi when you come to find it, except that I don't want to tell you exactly where I live. Honestly, can you blame me? I do have my family to think of, after all. And you big people can be scary sometimes!
Owner's note: My GPSr had some trouble settling on coordinates, so they may not be as accurate as possible. (Google Earth was no help either, due to the tree cover.) If you have better ones, feel free to suggest them! Even with imperfect coordinates, this cache should be an easy one to find, although there is a bit of a scramble down the hillside to get to it, hence the terrain rating. The most direct route may or may not be the best. Watch out for poison oak and various critters.
I'm not sure I'd recommend this cache for anyone with serious mobility issues, but here's my handicaching.com rating of H34432 anyway:
