Garlic Trail

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Picture clues below!   1 person or team spying on this cache!  

Hidden On: 16 Jun 2002
Waypoint (Landmark): N00295
Open Cache:  Personal use only
Cache type:  Normal
Cache size:   Normal

Difficulty:  (easy)
Terrain:  (easy)

Misc:

Comments:
Park is closed at sunset and in the winter is often only accessible from the back, or is it the front? Difficult to say. Anyway when the creek floods, one of the access roads gets closed. There may be poison oak, but I didn't see any. Getting to the cache does require a bit of bush wacking (about 5 feet), but be kind to the trees. There were some berry bushes near the cache, so be careful.

Clues:    decode

• What Park? 
  Puevfgznf Uvyy Cnex< be vf vg Hinf Perrx Erfheir/

• Where's that trail? 
  Ragre gur genvy npebff gur cnexvat ybg bccbfvgr gur ovt erq onea>

• Can't see the forest... 
  Sebz gur genvy urnq< svaq gur svefg erqjbbq ba gur evtug>

• OK... Where is it! 
  Vg vf oruvaq gur qbhoyr erqjbbq gerr whfg bss gur genvy n ovg hc uvyy>

Pictures:

 Where the cache is

 Trail Head

Rio,
Glad to see the cache is still there. Mr. Big sounded like he gave up too quickly.
Thank goodness you didn't disturb the natural habitat of the sacred California wood rat. I'd hate to think that there would be no more piles of sticks for these cuddly little, woodland creatures to live in.

--stefanis (cache placer)

Guess I pressed the wrong button and didn't log it "found" last time. Here's a note to correct that error.

Wood Rats, huh? Thanks for the explanation. I figured it to be just a big pile of sticks. The cache is there, and not in the inside, but on the outside of the nest. I found it with the two young'uns in tow on a cool, sunny Saturday afternoon. We took the harmonica and left a whistle (harmonica is quiter... aaaahhhhh). Took a top and left a caribiner.
First to sign the log! This baby's been here for some time with no finds. Fear not the wood rats, for they are but fellow cachers.
-Rio

Went by this morning on the way to work. Nice park, and quite a few people even at 8:30 on a Friday morning. Found the cache location easily (checked the clues to be sure). The cache appears to be located on/in an active wood rat nest. I didn't see the cache, but I was unwilling to destroy the nest. These are not the same rats we think of as pests, but native residents. They also are cachers! Their nests contain collections of artifacts they collect, and the cache may have been moved deep inside this large pile of sticks. One of the entrances is the tunnel visible at the base of the mound, nearest the trail. These nests are opened and examined by archaeologists in the Southwest, because some of them have been active for more than 10,000 years, and they contain a comprehensive inventory of human cultural artifacts.

It would be a shame to tear this nest apart, so I didn't. I suspect the cache is no more.
Mr. Big