October 15, 2005

ANX: The Angle of Eternity: What a great afternoon for a group caching trek! A group effort all the way; we started slow, but picked up steam as the puzzles unfolded.
Stage 1: Boulter said the answer was right under his nose; for us, it was just above mine. The level of our confusion was nicely illustrated by both craw, who was looking for inspiration in paint flecks, and vaccine, who figured that bird poop meant something significant.
Stage 2: In theme and nicely done. It wasn't long before a pattern emerged though.
Stage 3: I had to snicker a bit at bthomas and vaccine who were way off in the bushes somewhere when craw, burr, and I found the puzzle. It was their insight, though, that led us to a solution.
Stage 4: Plenty of evidence of previous cachers at this spot, and I must admit that we felt obliged to comb over all the same tired spots. As we should have anticipated a lot quicker, the hide was truely unique. As time goes on it won't get any easier. I think craw said it would aquire 'patina'. Indeed.
Stage 5: We fanned out pretty quickly on this one, and as I was contemplating a hike up a pretty steep slope bthomas made the find.
Final: This one reminded me of some sort of reality show contest. You know, the kind where one person shouts instructions to his blind-folded teammates...Lots of confusion, vague gesturing, dozens of opinions and requests. Gradually things came together though, and we had finished the quest.
Back in the car on the way home, we happened to glance at the picture on the cache page, carefully printed out and carried along, but forgotten in the heat of the moment. Hey! that would have been really helpful. It's simply a tribute to this cache, which fit together on so many levels it's truly amazing. Grand fun. Thanks so much for putting it together.

Great Wall of Sanborn: There was this string accross the creek close to the cache. Strange. I thought it might be part of a puzzle cache, but evidently not. Thanks.

328: We walked right past that 'No Pedestrians' sign to get back in the car after finding this cache. Hmmmm... TFTC.

Assume Nothing #2 1/2: When we arrived on scene, there was a kid trying to feed his dollar into the vending machine. It must have been pretty wrinkled, 'cuz he was having trouble. Fortunately, he didn't look around from his work, and we searched while he fed, and fed, and fed, and fed...Eventually it was victory for us and for him! We were happy. He looked relieved. TFTC.

SC- not! - What is wrong with this LC?: I hate it when things like expressways and creeks get in the way. Thanks for the quick score (once we got on scene!).

Excuses, Excuses: Well, not a habenero spicy burn your mouth evil, but more of a tangy mango salsa leave your mouth pleasantly warm evil. Unfortunately, no time for tacos, it's on to the next cache.

Cheap (First Cache): Walking back to the car after spending way too much time on this cache, vaccine read us clownknife's log from his PDA. After hearing about those travails, I definitely have nothing to complain about.

Monsters Could Hide Here: Okay, I freely admit it: I'd thrown in the towel quite a while befor burr found this cache. Nicely done.

My Kind of Town - Campbell: Octoberfest was over for the evening, so it was just us and some food vendors in the distance. We systematically approached the problem, and craw came up with the find. Thanks!

Billy's Box: Getting to it was most of the trouble. First a creek, then an embankment. Fortunately these were only temporary setbacks! TFTC.

Campbell Park Troll: A nice night for a stroll in the park. We looked pretty carefully, the troll must be on vacation.

Airborne: I'm sure the people walking just as we opened the plastic bag with the log in it thought we were doing something quite different than what we actually were. Good place for it too.