Prestige - 2/27/2010

The latter half of my week was spent providing A/V support to a conference in Memphis, so I was pretty tired when I returned to my office Friday night. Just as I arrived, my good friend jbgreer called to ask if I still wanted to hunt PRESTIGE by magicrock (GC10M85). Well, of course I did! We planned to meet up Saturday morning at 9 am to begin the hunt.

PRESTIGE is a 4/5 rated geocache with a puzzle to solve in order to get the coordinates. The cache page gives a better description of the puzzle, but basically you are to identify 11 distinct piles of candy within the picture and count different colors of candy to get the coordinates.

The above picture - a stereogram - is beyond my eyes ability to properly view, so I used software to identify the 11 piles of candy. I figured that the rest of the puzzle would be a snap, but I still had problems discerning colors among other things. I spent days trying different solutions with no success. I gave up. Moved on.

While at the 6th annual GOWT gathering last week, jbgreer met magicrock and talked to him about the problems we were having. Magicrock willingly gave jbgreer the information needed to solve the puzzle, so when he later asked me if I wanted to hunt it, I agreed to.

We drove to the coordinates and remarkably made quick work of the find. Since we liked the hide and I liked magicrock's hides in general, we decided to hunt a few more magicrock caches.

Our initial plan was to hunt CEDAR GROVE CACHE by magicrock (GC18Q3Y) - a 6 stage multicache. On the way there we stopped at FTF Pirate #9: TREASURE CHEST by MagicRock (GC1CWZT).

[ Scenery along the way ]

[ Themed cache container ]

Next we hit FTF Pirate # 7: Boltn' Loose by magicrock (GC1344H). I had already found this cache, but hoped that jbgreer would like it as much as I did. It had been moved a good distance since I hunted it, but it was still in a good area and after finding it, jbgreer remarked that this cache "renewed his enjoyment of geocaching".

Next, we drove to the recommended parking area for CEDAR GROVE CACHE by magicrock (GC18Q3Y). While parking, we met the owner of the land we were on and after telling him what we were up to, he told us he had no problem with us parking there. After a rough start, we made our way to the first stage. We easily found it, but after a long search for the second stage and reading the previous logs, we decided to give up.

We decided to get lunch in Cordova and hunt two more caches in Shelby Farms to round out the day.

We planned to eat at Chik-fil-A, but after seeing the crowds, we opted for the Taco Bell just down the road. Good food in one of the nicest Taco Bells I had eaten in. Now off to the caches...

Upon arriving at Shelby Farms, we found a place to park that was convenient to both caches we were going after. Since Ode to Spencersb by Abiectio (GC21Z06) was only a short distance away, we went after it first. After a bit, we seemed to be getting further away so we backtracked a short distance to a little used trail I had noticed. It turned out to be the right way in. We quickly found the cache and signed the log. I picked up a geocoin to move on. We left the area the same way we came in.

[ Through, around, or what ? ]

We returned to the truck to get me some fresh batteries, when jbgreer thought he saw prontopup park nearby. We stood still for a moment to let him get out to verify that is who it was, but he wouldn't leave his car. I changed the batteries in my GPSr and turned around and he was still sitting motionless in his car. We started to walk on to the next cache and after getting about 100 feet away, I turned around and sure enough, it was prontopup finally leaving his car to hunt the cache we had just found.

Off we went to hunt Heart of "Lucius Burch" by Hoot Owl (GC23084). This part of the park has many trails leading in many different directions, so it was providence that we found the correct trails to take. Jbgreer was somewhat amazed that I didn't insist on bushwhacking my way through. After hiking around 1 mile, we got to within 100 feet of the cache and headed in to make the find.

[ Necklace says - FTF PIRATE NUMBER NINE TREASURE CHEST GC1CWZT (the cache we found earlier in the day) ]

This would be our last cache of the day. We hiked back to the truck and headed off in search of gasoline before parting ways.

After I returned home and logged my finds, I was curious as to where I went wrong on the PRESTIGE puzzle. I took the known coordinates and used them to discern the numbers of candy of different colors that were a part of the puzzle and still couldn't properly reconcile where I went wrong.