Quest4Treasure Archives

I thought it would be an interesting idea if everyone posted a funny story... just anything humorous or embarrassing that has come of your treasure hunting obsession.  Perhaps your boss caught you reading the secret... perhaps a policeman inquired as to why you were looking in every hole of every tree.  I don't know, something like that. I thought some comic relief would be nice... of course, let's not let this distract us from our valiant hunt!!! -regulus

I've got a good one:  I spent a great deal of time trying to disprove Houston's indicators on the basis that the verse described Des Plaines, IL almost exactly!

I drag my friends, family, and girlfriend treasure hunting/geocaching... and despite the efforts of my trusty GPS, we always end up lost, or ending up right back where we started. I have since earned the title... "The Master O' Circles"

That's because sattelites are in space and therefore useless.  Get yourself a good map compass, or a lensatic...  Learn to shoot azimuths, back azimuths, and resection a map, and not only will you never need to worry about batteries or too many clouds, but you'll never end up dead in an unforgiving wilderness.  Unless you forgot your water.

I know of a nifty way to recycle your yellow water. not sure how much i trust it though.

If you are talking about pee pee then I can tell you right now that it is a terrible idea to consume your own waste in any form for survival.  It is also a terrible idea to consume the waste of anything else because waste is rejected (by which i mean purged) by the body for a reason; because your body has consumed all of the available nutrients it intends to use from it.  Mother birds, if you are thinking of that as well, regurgitate food for their young because it is undigested and easy to swallow.  Nearly every living creature that lives in a desert is edible, if unappetizing and dowright gross-tasting.  You should NEVER EVER eat anything that your body purges.  Urine contains high levels of "Earth Salts," which will dehydrate you faster than the heat.

ah, but my method works wonders on very salty water_ that i have tried. as for the Purged Purged water, i would be afraid to try. the poor guy whose arm got trapped drank it straight before removing his arm and hiking out. he had no choice. yuck

What is it?  Boil it?  Evaporate the water leaving only the salt? SERE school taught me one thing and that is in order to survive for as long as possible, you have to eat or drink things which may look and taste absolutely disgusting... But urine is out of the question.  I mean, you do what ever you have to do, but as long as other options exist (and the real problem is that most people aren't aware of them) you should take them.  Heartily.  Basically, don't consume anything that makes yo throw up, that comes out of your urethra or anus (or any other animal's), and avoid things that look poisonous.  The latter part was vague because there are too many indicators of such to list.  Sterile urine only comes form healthy kidneys, which they aren't when you've been living in the dirt, woods, or desert for very long.  That guy on that TV Show, where he puts himself in dismal places where humans don't live and gives survival tips always makes me mad because his advice is misleading (especially the part about eating scorpions and cow dung); like people who claim that you can dissuade a dog's smell from your own, or that you can survive underwater with a pole to breathe.  That stuff doesn't work.  In fact, it will get you killed.

Great advice all aroud. My method isn't very practical if you are lost because of the needed supplies but makes a neat experiment for your kids. Make a large pan or bowl of very salty water and put an empty jar in the center of it. Cover the top of the bowl  /  pan with seran wrap, place a small stone on the wrap above the jar, leave in the sun and and let Mother Nature work her evaporative magic. I still would'nt try it with the yellow water though.

I have a sort of funny story-- or maybe not quite so funny as just amusing. When I was married to Typler's dad, before he was even a year old, we were working Masquerade, Treasure(lost horse), and Money Hunt. I was obsessed in the worst way--spent hours and hours in the library, had reams of paper with notations all over them. And I wasn't getting anywhere but deeper. I needed a break. Hallowe'en came 'round and we decided to have a party, and make our own treasure hunt. We thought up a puzzle based on chess moves--using the letters of the chess pieces and whether or not they were black or white pieces ("in the dark move back, in the light move forward" was our clue) we set up a chess game played between two "wizards" --played by me and my oldest son (J, aged 15). Only our hands were visible in the puzzle, which we videotaped using the neighbor's cam-corder. We went to a Goodwill store and bought a cheap silver wine goblet, which I "gussied up" by gluing "jewels" on using hot glue.Then we separated the puzzle into five separate lines, each one of which would yield part of the answer--and gave each one of the five sections an identity with a specific ancient country--Egypt, Siberia, China, Turkey, and America. We got music, props, National Geographic maps, and other 'identifiers' for each country, and us Wizards then "played" our chess game across the continents, moving back and forth in the alphabet using standard chess notification (Pawn to King's 3, etc.) and by the end of the 20 minute tape, if you took down all the moves and did them correctly, you would have a sentence that spelled out "In the Pumpkin." Our acting was horrible, of course, and the transitions were very rough, but the puzzle kept everyone at the party busy for at least three hours while they tried various things. The solution was finally discovered, however. But "in the pumpkin" didn't make sense to anyone, because the only pumpkin in the house was the very obviously UNCUT one in the middle of the food table--my centerpiece. It took them a little while longer to realize that they only had to pick the pumpkin up and see that the opening was on the bottom--not the top--and it had been hidden by the decorations arranged around it. All in all, an extremely successful effort. I learned how to contruct a puzzle, how to 'back-engineer' and what clues to use and NOT use...and also that a final twist was never amiss; and also how to make a film, a project I'd never thought about before or since. Too bad I never learned how to do a Wizard's voice--that remains the single most amusing part of the puzzle tape to this day, since I sounded a lot like a munchkin on helium. Still, "Search for the Chalice" was pretty much one of the most fun things I've ever done, and a great memory from those early years of marriage. The marriage didn't last, but I still have the tape!

I was once on a land nav course (which is where they stick a bunch of posts wih grid coordinates on them in trandom places throughout the woods, and make you find them with a map and a compass), and was having an enormous amount of trouble finding this pone, which to all available evidence was located in an open field.  There was only one post, and I was standing at it for about fifteen minutes, cloverleafing something like 300m at a time to find this damn OTHER post that i was looking for.  I kept checking the coordinates written on it, and plotting and replotting it on my map,, knowing for CERTAIN that the one I was lookming for was very close.  My instructor Sergeant came barreling out in a golf cart to see why i had been wandering around in the field for all this time, and when I told him, we began looking for it together.  After anothe ten minutes or so, he finally radioed the head to see if the post had been removed, and they said it wasn't.  So we kept looking, and finally, he said "Let me see your grid coordinates, and that will give us an idea of how close it is."  I balanced my map and notes on the top of the post i had found earlier, and while I was calculating distances and rawing lines on a map, the sergeant said: "read what you have written down, and then read this damn post..."  Guess what?  It was the one I had been looking for, with help, for almost forty five minutes.

Unknown: Basically, for a little over two hours, we walked around this little park trying to find this v.  We looked at everything.  gazebo, bridge supports, north, west, east.  Lines of sight...  And we focused a little on what got us to this park, the first 12 lines of the verse.  From that, we both agreed we were in the right place.  Feeling 100 % about it as a matter of fact. We started looking for this darned v.  And I have to tell you all, Fox is a lot better at details than I, looking at things that i had previously brushed off.  We find ourselves standing in front of the monument.  22 steps?  middle of one branch?  The monument is this large flagpole with a t shape at the top.  On either side is a flag, with the Stars and Stripes in the middle of the t.  One flag is of a maple leaf, seemingly the symbol for JPJ Park  ( a JPJ Park sign on the wrought iron fence around the monument had the leaf).  Couldn't tell what the third flag was.  But both outside flags were strung up by cables, starting at the base rising to the 30 some odd feet t creating the v shape.  Maybe?  The base itself is about 4 feet high where the flagpole is mounted and we noticed that you could actually stand on that thing.  Look down.  Always haunted me, look down?  And see simple roots, In rhapsodic man's soil?  It's gotta be right here at the base somewhere! On the east side of this huge base and against it's wall, I noticed an old styrofoam cooler hidden behind the brush.  I found an unlocked gate in the wrought iron and walked in to take a look.  It contained old stanky water with two bouquetts of flowers that had died many many months ago.  We looked at each other, we didn't have the 22 steps, we had hoped we had found the v, but gaze north?  We decided that maybe the spot could be at either side of middle of one branch of the v, east or west?  Back to the cooler.  What if, and this is a major stretch, someone close to BP who knew The Secret, left those flowers as some kind of memorial right on the x spot. I know, I know.  We laughed about that too but we were really pressed for time and Fox grabs a stick to start digging.  With that, a public parks worker pulls right up to us in a van, right on the foot path.  We though we we were busted.  We decide quickley to go to this guy and explain what we were doing.  The guy hands us a shovel from the back of the van and said "good luck".  Fate!  Now it's gotta be here!  A shovel had just walked up to us.  We got about 2 foot and this guy, Evan, had to go and he took his shovel.  Looking at our watches and a flight to catch, we dug with the stick for another twenty minutes before giving up.  To all of you who had dug before and know about it, we really thought we were going to pull this thing out of the ground.  And that my friends, was fun! The following was taken from the post where Fox and I were at JPJ Park.  I still laugh at it.  Cool!

digging in GGPARK once you get down a foot the soil becomes sand. I had dug down about 3 feet and was widening the hole. I took a break and my friend jumped into the hole and started to dig. suddenly he stopped, I bent over to see what  he was looking at. a section of the side of the hole was moving suddenly it caved away. leaving a small tunnel/opening with a very suprised rodent looking out The rodent then fell into the hole with my friend. Im not sure who was more scared, but they both got out of the hole in record time.

It was the last day I was able to dig in the Houston zoo.  We were using the very cool, very large bulldozer.  We had been digging for about 2 hours, nothing. It was getting dark and we decided to quit and push the dirt back into the hole. The dozer operator drove to the other side of the area and started pushing dirt.  I watched him, thinking "I'm forgetting something" when boom, a geyser erupts.  I had forgotten that right where the dirt was piled was a hose connection.  The dozer had sheared it right at the ground. Of course, this zoo is 30 years old.  No one knew where the shut off valve was. Water was pouring into the CZ.  We called everyone, shut off 3 different valves and nothing. It was now 3 hours later, pitch black, the water level was at our ankles in some places and the zoo director told me to "get out of there". I talked to him some time later and he said that they had to call an "old timer" out of his bed to come help them find the shut off valve, which by that time was about 3 feet under water and about 3 hours later.  It was then that I decided to lay low for a while from the zoo... wilhouse

Unknown: ...boom, a geyser erupts There's the spout!