***SPOILER WARNING***
details for a cache will be exposed in this post, do not read if you cache in Stone Mountain Park, GA and do not want to have a HUGE hint for one of the multi-caches
***SPOILER WARNING***
Went out caching today and had just 1 on our radar, a multi at Stone Mountain Park with an unlisted number of stages. Description said to plan on 3-4 hours to complete it. The wife and I headed out with plans to get it out of the way then move on with our day as the heat got worse. Little did we know that our 3-4 hour adventure was about to take a rather interesting turn. We got to the coords of Stage 1, a Covered Bridge, and began our search. Its a single lane bridge with a pedestrian path and rail on one side. I had remembered the cache description saying that the first Stage was on the Island end of the bridge and the GPSr took us there. My wife was searching below and I was searching inside the Covered Bridge on the walkway when she came up with the find. Keep in mind this was 4th of July weekend at Stone Mountain Park. Muggles were crawling all over that island and surrounding area but it was still early. She made the find without drawing attention and then we got the info and replaced the cache. We then took off to the coords listed and began our search. At GZ for the coords we found I noticed a large tackle box hidden in a pile of fallen trees and limbs. I thought to myself "Wha? This cant' be it, we're just on Stage 2, WTF?" Sure enough, I opened the box and discovered the log and some items that were listed on the cache page. We signed the log and left scratching our heads wondering if the joke was on us. I emailed the cache adopter, the original owner has since abandoned this one and moved, and asked him what the joke was. We traded a few emails back and forth while I was walking back to the car, I love my iPhone, and eventually we figured out that my wife found Stage 8 and not Stage 1. I had overlooked four simple words in the description. Stage 1 is on the
inside of the bridge on the island side. Apparently the original owner made a very elaborate 9 Stage Multi that takes the cacher back to Stage 1 for Stage 8 but the hide is outside of the bridge for Stage 8. My wife had found the wrong cache but we didn't realize it.
So the Whoops! here is 2 fold. First the original owner placed a Stage too close to another Stage. To me this is a problem waiting to happen but apparently from my review of the logs, we are the first to make this mistake. So maybe I'm wrong but still it seems problematic. Second Whoops! is my missing the inside of the bridge part of the Stage 1 description thus robbing us of a fun Multi cache and hike.
With the ever increasing Muggle population due to the Holiday we decided to just get outside the park and hit some Urban Caches in the nearby shopping areas. We are planning on going back and doing this cache from Start to Finish properly but for now we'll take our Whoops! Smiley and wait for the day we go back to find the other 7 Stages. :)
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