Whispering Angel Falls

So I was looking for my cache for the day so I decided to head for this one.  Walnut Creek Park is pretty cache dense with over 20 caches in 293 acres, but this one is one of the most popular (outside of a highly regarded night multicache called Threat Level Midnight, but that’s a cache for a different time).  I went wandering the paths of the park until I ran into a cliffside overlooking the creek.  How was I going to get over the river?  Well, I sort of cheated.  A main road running along the side of the park was nearby and ran by the cliff, bypassing and going over the drop.  So I went up on the road, passed the difficult part of the drop, avoiding having to turn back and finding another route.  After passing a tent set up in the woods, I saw something…

A bucket in a tree next to a rock with a gnome.  This can’t be a coincidence.  The gnome rock (from older photos you can see the gnome was formerly a cherub) had a giant hole on the top.  The cache was in there!  But I couldn’t reach it!  Surely there was a way to get it out!  A bucket…  Rust around the metal part of the container…  A source of water…  

Boom!  Actually, not really.  The creeks around here have been really low despite recent crazy rainfall so the level was too low to get water from the creek.  So, I cheated again.  For the first time ever, I used my extendable magnet.  Rust means iron and iron means magnetic properties.  So I extended it a bit, reached it down the hole, and, after attaching to it, pulled the cache out.  You do the best you can with what you have and victory requires no explanation.  That, my friends, is how a smiley is earned.