Dead Man Mesa Letterbox Hybrid
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Size: 
(regular)
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An ammo can at 5800 feet elevation. The terrain is open scrub and level but rocky and quite muddy when wet. Suitable for older children and animal companions. Bring an ink pad if you wish to take an impression of the hand-carved stamp, or wish to leave your impression in the notebook provided.
Any place with a name like Deadman Mesa deserves a geocache. A story is told that at the time of the Vernal and the Autumnal equiluxes when the time from sundown to sunup is exactly equal, a strange quiet comes over the mesa - all life energy seems to ebb - the exact opposisite of an energy vortex. Communication devices (and GPSrs?) stop working. There is an account, perhaps apocryphal, that the only remains of an old prospector who camped on the mesa during the quilux were his bones, bleached and dessicated as if they had been exposed to the elements for years, even though the remains were found the next day. His wallet, camp utensils, and other personal objects nearby established his identity beyond doubt. But there have been other times when folks have gone out onto the mesa aand whose remains were never found. If you are on the mesa and your GPS starts acting erratic, you see and hear no sound of animal life, and it becomes very still, and your dog begins to whine, you might consider coming back at another, more propitious, time. The cache is on the highest point on the mesa but the slope up is very gradual. You can park along the road down into Fossil Creek and walk but you can get much closer with a 4WD, high clearance vehicle (if you take the right road!) The area is lovely but there is no great viewpoint or anything. Muggles are of no concern here, the cache is in plain sight. Please practice "leave no trace." This is a Letterbox Hybrid geocache. It functions just like any other geocache and has exchange items and a log. Signing the geocache log is all that is required to claim full credit for the find. The cache also contains the paraphernalia for Letterboxing, which entails exchanging rubber stamp images instead of exchange items. Participating in this aspect of a hybrid geocache is purely voluntary. Letterboxing activity requires that the letterbox contain a rubber stamp and something to accept the impression of rubber stamps. The finder also needs to have a personal rubber stamp, an ink pad and something in which to record stamp images. The finder thus develops a collection of impressions from the stamps in the various letterboxes found and each letterbox develops a collection of impressions from the finders. The stamps can be hand made or commercial. If you have the items you need for Letterbox Hybrids, you also have the items needed to participate in finding free standing Letterboxes. More information is available at www.letterboxing.org
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