The ranger who told me to look for the 'wrong' tree was right

Last month I was out near the Columbia River Gorge chasing a geocache that had 3 DNFs in a row. The description said 'look for the tall pine with the split trunk,' but every pine up there looked split to me. I ran into a park ranger at the trailhead and he said, 'forget the pines, find the lone oak that doesn't belong, caches love the odd one out.' Sure enough, 40 yards past the oak, tucked under a rock that was way too small to hide anything, I found the ammo can. Has anyone else had luck ignoring the obvious landmarks and trusting the weird detail instead?

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hayden72022d ago

Tbh that ranger sounds like a total legend. I had almost the exact same thing happen down in the Ozarks, the clue said to find the dead cedar with the bent top, and I walked past like three of those before I stopped and looked for the one weird maple with the bark stripped off. That's where the hide was, half buried under a root. It's like whoever hides these things knows people overthink the obvious stuff, so they toss in a red herring just to mess with you. Honestly, I trust the weird detail more than the main landmark now, it's saved me a ton of bushwhacking.