September 7 - 27, 2008 - Token Creek County Park: Madison, Wisconsin

The location is Token Creek County Park located just northwest of Madison, Wisconsin. A large multi-use park by the intersection of some major highways and the Dane County Airport. I work not too far from this location, and often drive by this park. I also did a hike and logged a geocache here early in 2007. I only explored a small portion of the many miles of trail. Also in the time since then somebody created a 12-stage geocache that takes people on a circular tour of the park, and all of it's multiple uses. From the landscaping and natural areas at the entrance, past the playground, to the horse trails, into the doggie park, through the disc-golf course, to some more nature trail, and into the campgrounds. Each stage is a micro-sized container just containing a puzzle of some kind that must be solved in order to get the correct coordinates to the next stage. The 12th and final stage is a normal geocache container.

I started this on a Sunday morning, September 7th. I had the entire day free, so I was feeling hopeful that I would be able to do this entire quest in one day. I brought plenty of water, and lightened my load a little by just taking my cheap point-n-shoot camera with me that I could carry in a pocket. This camera also happens to be much better at focusing in very-close on objects and I knew I wanted to be photographing each stage's puzzle for reference. I also took blank paper along for notes and problem-solving, and had my phone to use as a calculator when needed.

As a consequence of just carrying around my cheap camera, I did not take too many scenery shots. That and I was always on a quest and did not stop too long in many places.

The first find set the tone for the rest. I had difficulty finding it, and the clue on where to find it actually was no help at all.

Had to solve this puzzle for stage 2.

I narrowed the answer to a pair of the multiple-guess answers, and lucked out in that the first of those locations I searched was the right place. Even using the printed clue for this stage, it was still difficult because the fake rock it was hiding in was concealed by grass.

I did stop to take some photos of the scenery here.

The next stage was an easy find.

And #4 was the easiest of all. The gps was pointing directly at this stump visible from the trail.

Now this one turned out to be difficult to find. Lucky it was in a concealed place and away from the eyes of people walking by on the trail.

The riddle inside this stage just went over my head. I searched all 4 listed coordinates, then searched 2 of them again to find #6. Starting to get a foul attitude towards micro-caches at this point.

OK, I took a flat-out guess on the brain-teaser inside of that cache, and prepared to search 4 locations again. Fortunately, the primary guess was correct and I found this cache with a short search.

It contained a riddle I knew the answer to right away (baseball-related) so it led me to the next stage. Unfortunately it was inside of the dog-exercise area (fenced-off). I avoid geocaches located inside of doggie parks for a reason. People walking alone without a pet in those areas just look out of place, and get people's suspicions up. I even tried scouting for a place to hop the fence in (it was located near a back fence) but gave up and just walked past all the people staring at me.

As I was solving the riddle and the associated math formula for getting the next stage coordinates, a dog almost ran on top of me, followed by it's owner. Lucky I had just hidden the container again and was doing some math with the calculator in my phone. Looked like I was just texting somebody.

#9 was velcroed to the bottom of a park bench. Here is the puzzle inside of that one.

Again, this puzzle went over my head. Unfortunately, the multiple-answer format ended a couple of stages ago. I made one incorrect guess, and searched the wrong area for 45 minutes. That was when I just had to give up for Day #1 and hiked back to my Jeep. That day totaled about 6.25 miles walked over a 5.5 hour time period. I Googled for the correct answer when I got home.

Three days later, with the correct coordinates, I returned after work in the late afternoon. I parked a little closer, and I knew that the location for stage #10 was in the disc-golf course. On the way there (and again carrying my cheap little camera) I ran into some wildlife. Saw a hawk fly in and land in a nearby tree. He's around the center of the frame.

Then stumbled upon some deer getting close to stage 10.

A park ranger also drove up to question me shortly after I took this photo. Had to come clean about what I was doing. All was OK.

Now I did figure out the riddle immediately, and made an attempt to get to stage #11 before the sun set. It was wooded there, getting dark, and the object the container was supposed to be attached to had fallen over and was across a creek. I left while I still had sunlight and decided to return here another day to find the container for #11.

In the meantime, there was a rainy weekend, and another hiking trip to a different place on the next weekend. Now that brings us to today, 9-27-2008.

I had re-read the logs for this geocache, and the previous finder said that stage #11 had fallen over when he found also, but the container was still there to be found. I flipped the object over (a wooden guard-rail for a culvert) and found the container this time. Not too easy for me, definitely would require help if I was a smaller person.

OK, this puzzle went over my head too.

I tried solving immediately. I even walked back on the trail I used to get there and sat at a bench I remembered to try attacking the problem with algebra. Spent about 1 hour total. I then just gave up and began walking back out to leave. I was within eyesight of my Jeep, when I had an "Ah-HA!" moment and immediately knew the answer. No algebra required, math can be done without a calculator or writing.

The topper to this was the coordinates for the final container was under 200 feet from that park bench where I was doing all my fancy ciphering.

Walked back the 1/2 mile to that bench, and on to the final location. Found it without drama.

I exchanged a toy car for a Green Bay Packers window decal, then documented my long, sad story in the log. Filled an entire page with that one. I also get a lifetime of memories.

I still had nearly 90 minutes before the kickoff for the Wisconsin-Michigan football game, so I tried a quick cache that was just across the road from the park entrance. It was hiding behind the "road closed" sign.

Short, sweet, but not terribly exciting. I would never bother doing this if I was not already so close by and had time to kill. It sure was a cute little container though. About the size of my thumb.

I saved all my walking routes for each trip, and combined them into this one map. It's nice and colorful, and shows I blanketed the outer areas of the entire park. The walk today was about 3 miles, and all 3 trips totaled up to over 11 miles walked. The person who published this geocache estimated it could be done with 4-5 miles of walking if all puzzles were solved correctly and the shortest path between stages used. Riiiggghhht!

I'm reasonably certain that I won't seek out another micro-cache for a long while now.