Skip to content

Island County Thomas Guide Challenge Mystery Cache

Hidden : 4/21/2012
Difficulty:
3.5 out of 5
Terrain:
3 out of 5

Size: Size:   regular (regular)

Join now to view geocache location details. It's free!

Watch

How Geocaching Works

Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions in our disclaimer.

Geocache Description:

Greetings and welcome to the Island County Thomas Guide Challenge. I love going to Island County. There are great beaches, woods, and open areas all around. A while back I created blackout challenges for Island County because in part, I could never find a Thomas Guide for this county. Now I have! Am using the Rand McNally Thomas Guide 1st Edition called "Island, Skagit & Whatcom Counties". It also has the San Juan Islands listed too.

Gotta Have Rules Or It Would Be Utter Chaos Out There

  • In order to claim this cache, you need to find and log a geocache on each available page of the 1st Edition Island County Thomas Guide. Those pages are: 131 132 140 141 142 143 152 153 154 155 156 157 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195
  • Your finds can be any time in your caching history.
  • The caches you use can be active, inactive, or archived finds.
  • You can use any caches you have owned provided they were published before April 2012 and found at least once.
  • You can use any type of cache type minus events and locationless.
  • All cache finds must be in Island County (ie no Edmonds from grid 195).
  • You need not worry about a grid unless it has an active cache in it.
  • If the only active caches seem to not be findable, email me and we can exclude that grid for you if its the only grid you are missing at the time of your qualification.
  • If you had your qualifications approved before finding the final and another grid appears, that does not matter. If you are qualified at a given moment in time, you cannot get unqualified later.
  • Sign the cache any time you like if you are in the area, but you can only log it if you have signed AND have the qualifications done.
  • The only caches excluded in this challenge are the BUGZ puzzle series as some of them may not be in Island County. There are plenty of caches in that grid to choose from anyway.

List your qualifications any way you see fit. Include your qualifying finds in a log entry if you like. A bookmark list would be ideal and to be honest, the preferred way. I have created a bookmark list of my qualifying caches to help you find possible candidates without scrolling through the book if you do not want to. Its the first bookmarked list on the cache page. These specific caches are not required (though a cache may be if its the only findable one in a grid), but it shows you a possible list you could do.

Not required, but the WinterTrio has graciously updated his Thomas Guide macro in GSAK to help figure out which cache is in which grid. Its called WaTG_Poly_to_Userdata.gsk and can be downloaded/installed in the macro section.

Grid 195 is back in play, a new cache was added June 2020. I do not see an active cache in grid 180 as of June 2020.

Cache is located in Saratoga Woods. Cache is about 100 feet off the trail. Have left an additional waypoint of a good spot to leave the trail. There is an unactivated coin for the first finder. Ammo can. Spoiler Pic is attached if someone needs it. I do not want anyone to DNF a challenge cache.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Oruvaq n znatyrq fant gerr 100 sg bss genvy. Onpx fvqr sebz jurer lbh yrnir genvy. Abg va n fghzc.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)