The Hunt

Hunting has always been in my blood and the Purple Hunt had all the
elements I loved - a difficult challenge and a very nice reward.
But to be honest, it was more about the memories it created with family and
friends that made this hunt a very special one. My Purple Hunt plaque
will be hung next to the antlers of my first white tail deer.

My obsession for seeking hidden treasures started about 3 years ago,
when our friends, the Thompsons, introduced us to geocaching.
At first, I liked the physical challenge of the sport.
I have dove 12 ft in the Kalamazoo river backwaters,
climbed 50 ft high in a tree and crawled 200 ft in a tunnel to find
the hidden caches. Then I started to tackle the mental challenges
of the game known as puzzle caches. In these you need
to decipher a code that will give you information on how to find the cache.
This introduced me to the world of cryptography where I have spent
several late nights highlighting my hair gray. It was very
challenging at first, but as I persisted through them,
I gained a wealth of knowledge. Probably, the most important
thing I have learned from geocaching is, not one person can do it all.
You need strength and knowledge from others to help you succeed.

So when we were introduced to the Purple Hunt in Nov 2008,
we immediately teamed up with the Thompsons. It was fun to see
a collective effort from ages 13-51 deciphering each clues.
We all have different backgrounds and knowledge and everyone
played a key role in finding this nail. In the end, we probably
had only 20 correct answers out of 47. But that just goes to show you don't
need all the answers to find this treasure. In fact,
we thought for sure it was in DNR Park about 2 miles away.
We took five different trips there and search it so thorough
that we felt 100% confident it was not there.

On our last trip to DNR Park, we drove past the last key needed
to crack this mystery. Robin saw a road sign for Buth Dr and it clicked.
It was a good thing I can't spell, because if I knew how John Wilkes Booth’s

name was spelled, I probably would have been looking for a phone.
However, we still checked 5 other locations in Comstock Park
before coming back to this area. This was our last stop for the night
since it was approaching 10pm.

As I walked the White Pine Trail, I came across a "post" (clue 1).
I did a quick search, like I did with many other posts, and NOTHING :(
I was not able to check the back side very well because it was
located on an incline, but I did notice a six (clue 44) engraved on the back.
I told myself I better check this one more time a little closer.
This time, my heart skipped a beat. I didn't even have to pull it out
to know this was it. I wanted to share this excitement with my friend Robin,
so I started running down the path like a monkey for .6 of a mile (clue 47)
screaming... I FOUND IT, I FOUND IT!

Thanks for the memories,

Doug (The Brandts)

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