Sparkyfry Finds 2,000 Caches! Mystery Cache

Bobcam is a man of action. To pay tribute to one of his best geocaching buddies, Minnesota's #1 geocacher crafted a custom ammo can, donated two geocoins as an FTF prize for the man of honor, filled the container with sparkyfry's favorite swag, and took time from his assault on the geocaching recordbooks to help with the hide. How's that for tribute!

(He offered to help make the puzzle too, but we wanted sparkfry to find the puzzle this year so we gently guided his efforts along other lines.)

"Sparkyfry is one of the nicest geocachers you'll ever meet. He's not chicken to climb a tree for you (don't tell his wife), and he hardly ever points and laughs when you're looking for a cache he's already found. He's also an avid puzzler and a talented musician who keeps cachers in the area busy learning interesting things they'd never otherwise know. There is evidence he can't fly, but he uses that ability to our benefit, decorating the landscape with interesting craters to ponder. Congrats on 2000 finds, sparkyfry!"

"Where does one start when talking about Sparkyfry? He is a dynamic person as well as a dynamic cacher. This is the cacher that found Magical Mystery Sewer and the Puzzle of all Puzzles in Golden Valley. His puzzles have made me study music and read poetry. When I am sitting in my office listening to Chopin it is because of Sparkyfry. I feel fortunate to have gone on some of the late night First to Find runs with him. I have learned a lot in the very short time caching with Him. Congrats on hitting 2000!"

"Daring man to be who risked his soon-to-be child growing up fatherless, limb, and marital bliss to chase aptly named "Confluence: Fargnots Folly" cache buried in the depths of the cedar swamp, while his very pregnant wife oversaw home remodeling. Unfortunately he died there, and since we'd forgotten to mark where his house was we didn't bother to drag the body back to civilization. Therefore we have no idea who this person is who has hijacked his geocaching.com account to continue to claim finds in his name, but it seems a fitting tribute to place this cache in honor of a geocacher who has claimed to have found 1.6k caches in 1.5 years."

"Congratulations to Sparky Fry on his 2000  cache finds!

I’ve gotten to know Sparkyfry through phone, e-mail and best of all through geocaching with him a couple of times.  His enthusiasm is highly contagious and his witty sense of humor makes caching together really fun.

I consider Sparkyfry one of the premier “puzzlers”, but the down side is I can’t solve but just a very few!?!

Looking forward to more caching good times!"

"My encounters with Sparkyfry can best be summed up in injuries that happened or nearly happened while caching with him:

November '08 - I got frostbitten, three others almost got frostbitten, and Twood80 nearly got crushed by a Mazzmn.
February '09 - I injured a finger and lost a fingernail, three people and one dog nearly went sliding to their dooms off of icy cliffs.
October '09 - Four of us were nearly lost forever in the wilderness while chasing Fargnot's Folly. Thankfully, Twood80 thought to bring her handyman along and his wilderness survival training saves us all.
February '10 - Sparkyfry's annual cliff diving attempt proved more successful as he managed to safely go flying off the cliff, and landed in three feet of snow.

All in all, Sparkyfry is a great guy and entertaining cacher, but I have to wonder if he's particularly accident prone or possibly the world's least effective hitman. I look forward to his continued caching and hope to see miss Sparkyfry (Littlefry? Sparkytot?) caching with him some day."

"Sparkyfry, his great attitude, his wealth of knowledge and his skills at the piano keyboard have made the winter go by quickly for me as I struggled with his puzzles. He is always quick to help and seems to know a perfect hint without giving away the solution. I was pretty casual when I started geocaching but I soon discovered the Unknown Cache and I was hooked. If it wasn’t for him I probably would have had the time to find a job by now. I first met him at a first to find party one snowy morning, he had his daughter Rose in toe. Now that is dedication. Congratulations on number 2000 sparkyfry."

"My dad is pretty cool. He plays that Piano Man song when I get grumpy, which is really nice. On days that he stays home from work, he takes me on cool adventures to pine trees, where I watch him walk around in circles and mumble for a long time, or to parking lots, where he plays peekaboo with the weird boxes at the bottom of light poles. That's pretty fun, but I still don't get why he goes out looking for plastic containers all the time. Sometimes he goes really far away to find them in the middle of the night. He tells my mom that they're effteeffs, which I guess is some kind of special plastic container. But really, why? I mean, I've found lots of those plastic containers in our own kitchen. It's really easy, and I'm not even one yet. And when he finds them, he doesn't even stick them in his mouth or chew on them or anything. He just leaves them there and we go home. Sometimes my dad is so weird.

I'm not sure how smart my dad is either. I was watching this TV show and these guys were diving off cliffs into water, which I guess makes sense. But that Bunny Guy told me that my dad likes to dive off cliffs into snow and rocks. I'm only a few months old, but even I know that's just dumb. And I guess one time he almost cut his own head off on a really big container. Do you know how he managed that? Get this: He tried to close the container with his head still in it! Yeah, I know, I don't know how he's lived so long either. He had blood all over himself and everything, but even after all that he just walked away and left that container there too. I sure hope I have my mom's brains.

But anyway, I feel pretty lucky. My dad stays home and plays with me a lot and I know he loves me. My mom tells me that he doesn't get nearly as many plastic containers as he did before I was born. Which means that he must love me more than plastic containers. And seeing how much he loves plastic containers, I feel pretty special. Thanks, Dad!"

"Sparkyfry was my first evidence that I wasn't the only geocacher in the world. I had less than ten finds to my name, and DNF'ed a nano hide of his. The next day I had a very kind email from him offering me a hint if I would like one. I think more than anything, that sums up what kind of a guy sparkyfry is.

I mean, he's a Superstar, with FTFs on some amazingly difficult caches and a string of achievements that very few geocachers can lay claim to. But you don't see him driving around in a black Mercedes all pimped up with bling-bling like other famous geocachers. Why, if you walked by him on the street, you wouldn't even know he had all those Olympic Geocaching Medals that he keeps telling everyone about.

And yet with all that fame he reached out to a struggling unknown and offered to help. And that's just a classy thing to do.

Way to go, Sparkyfry! Congrats! Here's to your next 2,000!"