The way they used to be

We will set our coordinates for Wapakoneta, hoping to discover, from Cache Owners mrb400 and cmgclone97, the way they used to be.

Fields of corn advertising LG Seeds herald the brave new world of gene editing of food crops. As the Billionaire Boys buy up farmland, their gene experts cut and paste DNA into existing plants. Mistakes and accidents morph into super toxic plants and allergens.

Or perhaps a super-sized road android.

Ground Zero bears witness to lifetimes, chronicled in stone.

Inscriptions follow us through the cemetery. Georg died at 22 and Andreas at 17, in this very German Ohio settlement. The resilient, optimistic individualism demanded by frontier life coexisted with communal grieving. Careful carving quantifies the invisible distance between hearts, forming letters into silent, soul-crushing meaning.

Gazing across the gravel path, with proud amazement at the strides made in waste water management, ancestors might also quake a little at the number of sinks, commodes, tubs, showers, washers, dish washers, and garden hoses needed to guarantee the happiness of their offspring.

Cache logs narrate their own history. The CO explains that the way they used to be, coordinates were approximate. A great geocacher used their geosense to study the area and investigate different possibilities, imagining the mental game plan of the cache hider. Accordingly, this hide may be concealed as far away as several hundred feet from the given coordinates.

Cachers in 2010 navigate the way they used to be, without a hitch. By 2012, there is a sea change. Loggers pointedly point out that the coordinates are off by 227 feet. Finally, in 2013, the CO zeroes the hide onto the coordinates, ending the conversation.

Have we finally uncovered the secret as to why some caches are still 227 feet off . . . ?