Wellsand's Gauntlet #8 Mystery Cache

I've enjoyed puzzles all my life. From jigsaw puzzles my family put together on cold winter days to various geometric shaped toys with colored sides and twisting pieces. From tricky mathematical problems to sudokus and other brain taxing puzzles. If you enjoy tackling puzzles like these then you might also want to out the Google U.S. Puzzle Championship.

Geo caching has been a newer hobby for me, but one that I truly enjoy spending time at. I have found that puzzle caches combined my love of puzzles and geocaching in the best of both worlds. To quote a fellow geocacher who shares my passion for puzzles: "I think puzzle caches are twice as good as traditional caches. You get to experience the excitement of the hunt and the thrill of the find twice - once when you find the real coordinates, and once again when you find the real cache!"

I find it hard to stop working on a good puzzle. There have been many late nights when I ask myself why i am still up working on a puzzle cache, yet the thrill of finding the solution always seems to draw me on. The puzzle caches I remember the most are usually the ones that were particularly tricky or took a long time for me to reach that "Ah-ha!" moment. But sometimes even a simpler puzzle is quite memorable due to a unique way in which the coordinates were hidden. You can try your hand at a number of the puzzle caches that I have enjoyed the most from Wellsand's Favorite Puzzles Bookmark List.

Often times when I find a really great puzzle cache I look to see what other puzzles the cacher has created. This of course usually ends up with me spending even later nights trying to tackle all the puzzles from a particular cacher whose ideas I enjoyed! So here I will say "thank you!" (or should that be "curse you!") to Punctatus, S Keillan, drgoby, Ubear & Stinky, Pink Pearl, Red Otter, and ePeterso2, for all the excellent puzzles that they have created.

One aspect of puzzle caches that is also interestin is that you can enjoy solving a puzzle even if you may never be in the area to make the actual cache find. I have corresponded with several cachers from other states through this shared enjoyment of puzzles. I have put together this series of caches with the idea that the puzzles could all be enjoyed by cachers no matter where they live at. It has taken me several months to research and create the puzzles in this series, and i hope that a large number of puzzle solvers get the chance to enjoy them.

The caches themselves are all hidden in the right-of-way along county roads near where I live. When viewed on a mapping program there was a few square miles of rural area completely devoid of caches that this series fills in an appropriate pattern. I also left the "cache size" atribute for these listed as "other" just so I could get one more question mark on my cache listings! When you enter the proper solution into the GeoCheck link additional details about the cache container will be revealed. I have included one of my new pathtags in each cache for the FTF.

Well enough background reading, it's time to get on to the puzzles! How many cachers will rise to the challenge and take up this gauntlet that I have thrown down? Will anyone be able to complete the entire ordeal? Good luck!

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the puzzle:

If you've solved the puzzle feel free to post a note to the cache page if you want, just please try to not give any hints in your post. Be one of the first ten cachers to send me an email with the solution to the puzzle to have your name listed here: