by Mig
Strawberry Jam sifting through the mulch with a stick
“Damn, this place is loaded with muggles.”
That phrase was embarrassingly uttered from my mouth yesterday afternoon, and no, I wasn’t quoting a line from the Harry Potter series (not like that’s better anyway). Actually, Strawberry Jam and I were searching for petroglyphs in Frost Park in Dania, playing the worldwide GPS based game known as Geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing). The point of the game is to find hidden containers (geocaches), using only GPS coordinates and a limited amount of clues. Once you find the concealed item, you log your success by writing your name in a log (usually it’s BYOP, bring your own pen/pencil) and documenting it online. Occasionally, the capsule will include a souvenir or a Travel Bug (an item that is transferred to different geocaches). This army of dedicated treasure hunters are known as geocachers; everyone else are referred to as muggles. For more nerd slang, check out the glossary.
Loyal geocachers take their version of hide and seek very seriously. A quick search for geocaches within 50 miles of my house in Sailboat Bend produced 2,412 results. After sifting through the overwhelming list, Strawberry Jam and I settled on a combination of four geocaches, ranging from “easy” to “hard”. Ideally, it’s best to search with a GPS device, but Google maps and the encrypted clues suffice. Our virgin quest took us to popular British hangout King’s Head to conquer the geocache known as A Taste Of England. I will not spoil this one for you guys, but it was pretty damn easy — a perfect confidence builder for newbies like us. Our next adventure, Chillin’ In Frost Park, had us searching for Native American carvings around a baseball field in order to discover some kind of camoflauged container. Twenty minutes later and empty handed, we soon discovered that this dork sport was no cake walk. Sadly, our last three searches were fruitless. Fortunately, we enjoyed ourselves so much that we decided to hide our own geocache in downtown Fort Lauderdale. I encourage our readers to sign up for a free account on the geocaching website, however, most of you won’t, so I will post the clues and coordinates of FTL Collective’s first geocache below. Just make sure you put it back where you found it (if you can find it, bwa ha ha). Happy hunting.
Coordinates: N 26° 07.062′ , W 080° 08.939′
Location:
Container description:
Don’t cut your ear off if you can’t find this geocache.
This small rectangular container is one of a kind.
Additional Clues:
cbchyne Bgvf Erqqvat fbat
Decryption Key:
A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I | J|K|L|M
———————————-
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z
