Stereogram II (Manawatu) Palmerston North, North Island, New Zealand
By the Seagnoid on 10-Mar-13. Waypoint GC447B3

After a successful few days in the Wairarapa doing the Apple and Nifty Swift geoarts we are spending the next few days around Palmerston North. After settling in to our motel and a late lunch we headed out again with Team Welsh. Our first priority was to find Stereogram II which has been on our radar since publication all those years ago, and only recently solved. We followed the instructions in the hint, and surprised ourselves with a very rapid find. Glad to finally turn this one into a smiley, thanks.

This was an on again and off again solve, coords had changed over time due to a shift in location and today was the day when the cache would be found. Visited here with KC and we were able to find the cache in very quick time. Thanks for the puzzle and the cache.

Got most of the way through this, finished with a group effort. Last time we drove right up to a dilapidated turning area. Today was an enforced pleasant walk from the gate to a recently upgraded planted turning area. The replacement cache took ages to find — the area is riddled with potential hint objects + sharp bits of metal. Cheers the Seagnoid!

A fallen tree has crushed the hide! I have instalked a new cache a couple of metres away. Same coordinates, but I have updated the hint.

Searched everywhere but nothing to be found. Suggest owner check up on this one as I suspect it's gone as none of us could find it (even with some good hints).

Structure that was at GZ has collapsed. 4 of us had a decent hunt anyway.

This puzzle had heading in all sorts of different directions...finally #1 figured and sorted..today we were in town and a short walk through busy area,the hint item was spotted. while it was quickly found and log signed, the solved co ords had me in a way different position ..thankfully for the hint made sense and everyone was happythanks for the puzzle and cache

Whew finally. This one had was a challenge indeed. The stereogram was the easy part. Then I misinterpreted what was required next. After a nudge I got on the right track but not. I continued to incur many red crosses. We even, unsuccessfully tried to guess where this was. Finally I got the right track so to speak. And the right track for the final. The clue was helpful here. Having a 7 year old in tow helped with the retrieval as it was a busy place today. Thanks for the puzzle and cache the Seagnoid

It's been threatening rain and wind all day but held off... until now. Waited for Yt to arrive in town and then jointly came to get it as CO has kindly replaced it. Good puzzle but beyond me as I'm colourblind. So in this regard Yt helped immensely. Thanks to Yt, and to theSeagnoid for the cache.

All good to go again

Cache replaced

Suspect missing. Will check/replace at end August.

The hint made sense when I arrived at GZ, but despite looking in several spots, couldn't find the cache

Quick find today and co-ords spot on. Gets a fave from me.

Yay! Worked out the correct co-ords after pondering for some time. We had a family day out today orienteering around this area and the start/finish was right at the first puzzle co-ords. So felt inspired for another go when I got home. Found 4-6 potentials but in the end the only really viable one on google maps was the one that proved to be correct. I probably walked past it at some point today on my 2.5km orienteering! Now to find a day and time to return and hopefully find and sign the log.

Zara and I had a great sleep over with the Etherlord kids. Now lets get them out of the house and to a new park Mum knows about. This park is still in construction mode but still lots of climbing things to play on and the kids had a ball. So to The Seagnoid - he loves climbing. Hey there is a cache here - lets check it out while we are here. Thanks TS for signing rights here. Cheers
Thursday - day twenty - Palmerston North to Wellington.

Its another epic 3+ week geocaching adventure with The Seagnoid, Zara, Toby and William to the Far North. What an amazing place to explore. Lots of walks, gravel roads and sand. Lots of amazing trees, beaches and interesting POIs. Lots of kilometers traveled by vehicle and foot. Vehicle breakdowns, making new friends and catching up with old friends and family. Snagged a couple of FTF's, lots of lonely caches and the odd event along the way. Lots of cache maintenance and replaced caches on this trip. But what an incredible adventure!!. Thanks to all the CO's who have made this trip so memorable..

All good here, no work required. However there is lots of development happening at the final so will keep an eye on this.

Had a little spare time this afternoon so decided to head out for an hour or so for a few caches. My eyes are getting a bit older these days so resorted to technological help to solve the first part of this puzzle. In the area today so decided to grab this cache. Thanks for the puzzle, and the cache.

Congratulations!!
This cache has been nominated in the 'Best learning experience' category for the Manawatu Geocaching Club's Awards Night 2018 (GC7ZT88).
Thank you for your time and effort in releasing this cache.

Finally I can say that I've solved this one. I first discovered this puzzle about 3 months ago, having done the night cache just down the road. I don't have any problems seeing Sterograms, but seeing the image and understanding what I'm supposed to do with what I'm seeing are two very different things! I spent several weeks just occasionally looking at it to try to figure the correlation between the image and the given grid, but in the end I was given a clue by a friend which helped me to understand what I needed to do. Solving the puzzle actually generated about half a dozen different but equally legitimate sets of coordinates, but the Geo Checker confirmed that one of them was correct, so since then I've just been waiting for the right chance to try to find the Cache. And today was that day, whilst on the way to my first GIFF event. The actual find was pretty straight forward, and the log was soon signed and re-hidden as found. Today was a good day, so thanks for the cache.

Found today with TwigNZ. TFTC

We had some visitors over the weekend and we all decided to go for a drive and get a few caches, we had wanted to get this cache for some time now so today was the day even thought it was cold and breezy not very pleasant at all but that wasn't stopping us today we wanted the Puzzle cache. It was a pleasant walking track. It was great, a few mountain bikers in the area , not many walkers only us silly cacher hunters, then we went off track and it was a quick find, that's always a plus on a cold day, hint was excellent. Thank you for the puzzle cache and placing a cache in a nice area. TFTPC cache was all good here.

Out with watcache

After spending a fair bit of time with popmac hunting for this one before checking the logs and seeing it had been moved (thats what I get for saving it I guess), a quick message to Co with no luck we moved onto another paf and soon had the updated information, few people out and about but gz is all safe and well, thanks for the cache, this one required more work than the first one but still fun to do

Found with marisa&kaleb after International Geocaching Day 2017 Event. Picked up TB. Thanks the Seagnoid for this cache.

Found with my mum Gr33nslime and perhaps my dad JimmyNZ. I was either in the car seat supervising from the back, in the front pack supervising from the front, or in the pram, supervising from knee height! Mum is trying the mass logging thing with GSAK hence the really general log entry![^] Thanks for the cache!

# 961 I slaved over this one for a couple of evenings. I could see the image okay, and got the data, but wasn't sure what to do with it. Did all sorts of colouring in of grids etc, but JimmyNZ made the solve, without any help, albeit slowly and step-wise. It is a great puzzle, and gets a favourite from me purely for the uniqueness, and the pleasure when JimmyNZ turned his computer screen around to reveal the geochecker CONGRATULATIONS!

We went out to get the final under the cover of darkness while in the throws of placing a new night cache. JimmyNZ was almost positive he had re-found the correct forked tree where he had found it in the past, but it wasnt there any more. Turns out it had been rescued and removed to higher ground so I did a swapsie for the coords and found the new container in a very good new location. Did a TB swap and took the pathtag to put with my other Seagnoid tag (among others). Thanks Seagnoid, your puzzles never disappoint... still waiting for nonname VI

Puzzle updated, final updated, hint updated, geochecker updated. All ready to go again!

Moved cache to make it less flood prone. Haven't yet updated the puzzle to suit, so if you need the new coords email me and I will swap the old coords for some spanky new shiney ones.

After collecting the brand new multi in Feilding this morning I decided to head in Palmerston North for these three caches at the end of maxwells line.

I have been looking at this one since solving Stereogram I early last year. I have no problems seeing these magic eye puzzles so I relayed the information to sunju who can't make out anything in them.

So now we had two different ways to solve this and we still weren't making any progress. Had to admit defeat and ask a fellow cacher for a clue and from there it all became clear and we quickly had the green tick on geocheck.

No problems locating the cache at the final today. It's always so satisfying to finally to turn an annoying blue dot into a smiley. TFTC

This one had outsmarted me for months! I had given up until I talked to my colleague, Push'n East. I couldn't see anything in the picture but she could. We teamed up to see what we could figure with what was known. Still no joy. So I resorted to a hint from a fellow cacher and then suddenly things made a bit more sense. It did not take long to then work out the co ordinates. Being a lovely day today, and having a visit to the hospital to visit our one day old granddaughter cut short (she was having a grizzle and having done my time with crying babies I chose to let them sort her out and go caching). A bit of a walk and was nervous I was going to be busted by muggles coming and going from splashing in the nearby river. However, I had it found, signed and rehid in no time at all and wandered back to the car. Great puzzle but you are pretty much beggared if you cannot see what's in the picture so many thanks to Push'n East for sharing her vision with me. Great puzzle. TFTC.

# 500 and a long time coming. Didn't really plan to get this one today but with a dot day coinciding with my 500th cache find I thought I had too. Grabbed this morning when I'm usually out running around Massey in the morning. How did I end out down here you ask? Well I skipped my usually route for a new longer trot out this way. At about 10k all up, having a break to go hunt for a cache was a good way to get a breather. Talk about a comedy of errors though. Loaded the correct co ords into the GPS last night and made sure to turn it on so it could acquire with plenty of time left to run. Maybe the grey sky interfered, but I had to stop at where I thought the GZ was to let the GPS sort itself out. Even then it had me in the wrong location, so I was forced to recall how you calibrate this darn thing. Meanwhile time is ticking on and I'm suppose to get to work at some reasonable point today. In the end the spot was located and I went about getting into the right location, then routing around what I thought were some geotrails, all of which had me searching in low flood prone areas. Wasn't until I recalled a maint log from the CO that I reassessed my search area and the cache was found. Good hide location and the cache was dry, in good nick and still has an assortment of treasure in it for some lucky cacher. With the log dutifully filled, I tucked the pen back into my shirt and trotted the 5k back to my car. The puzzle itself was annoying to say the least. I hate it when Gr33nslime shows me a mystery late in the evening which turns into several days worth of trying to figure out how the CO decided to conceal the information. The puzzle seemed straight forward in the end and I'm glad Gr33nslime has the eyes for these things. In the end I found I was over complicating the required technique and after taking a step back and simplifying my approach it was clear there were only two possible answers (that I saw), and as luck would have it the last one I tried rewarded me with a green geochecker symbol. Thanks for the cache, another smiley done and off my palmy map. Few more to go..

Spent an evening puzzling over this one. I could see the patterns in 3D and even tried colouring in the grid to see what I could decipher. No success though and I had to call on Mrs geodatum for the next step (thanks!). Finally, armed with the correct coordinates I made the most of a rare sunny, calm day and enjoyed a bike ride to claim this one. Neatly hidden and the contents are in perfect condition. Took the TB to move on. Satisfying to tick off this long standing, clever puzzle at last. Thanks Seagnoid!

I could see the image of the puzzle, but wasn't sure what to do with it! I got a hint on how the puzzle worked at the leap day event and recently worked out the final coords.

This afternoon we took a trip to the GZ and made a nice quick find. Nice location and great cache! I love magic eye puzzles! Fave point from us

Thanks for the cool puzzle!
I had looked at this stereogram many times without sorting out the numbers until this last time after I had stared at it for ages and tried a couple of combinations I got the green light from Geocheck!!
Yay - another find for Leap day and a great place to walk the dog! searchDog enjoyed 2 swims today as after swim 1 he rolled in horse manure near GZ and needed a much longer swim to clean it off!
The cache was in As-New condition and perfectly dry inside. Added Buzz Lightyear and an "Incredibles" domino. TFTP

After a wee chat with the C>O. I went back to the site today and This time it was safe and sound and not a flood victim as it was at my first attempt. While the co-ords were about 7m away it is quite straight forward. Thank you for this cache and another smiley face.

After solving a month or so ago after I had a duh & a lightbulb moment. It's taken me a while to get here. Then I read the log that it was completely missing and thought I'd go and have a look but that never eventuated either but now I saw a maintenance run had been done I'd go and have another look.

So I got there. And forgot my pen what a daft thing to do. So I will get back cause the kids eyes popped when they saw the little bike track nearby. But knowing us it might be a while so I thought I'd write a note to say, yay I've solved it & I've found it.

eta: Changed to found as Miss Swiss wanted to go back this arvo to give the bike track a go. Changed to found date too.

This entry was edited by SwissFamily1 on Saturday, 03 October 2015 at 07:26:24 UTC.

[green] Up in Palmy for a week long course at Linton, so I came up Friday so I could do a huge maintenance run.
Well, not only is the cache gone, but so has the entire cache hide! The floods must have been pretty awesome through here. Cache is now restored, new container, new log. Better protected from the floods, hint updated. Same coordinates, so no change to the puzzle.

Looked for this. After negotiating silt covered, muddy tracks. The GZ, if I had it correct, had been covered in silt from the recent floods and tho' I looked and dug around with a stick I did not come upon anything that may have a cache.... might need a check on this..took photos to show the silt.

Out with Just-Lookin & Princess Emily on a bit of a geocaching run in the Manawatu.

Another puzzle I had wanted to get found for quite a while - short search required at final location.
SL TFTC

On a road trip with tmann421 and Princess-Emily. Great weather and another fun weekend collecting a few of the local caches.

A nice quick find and then onto the next.

TFTC

Found with Just-Lookin & tmann421

TFTC

Maintenance Visit by Etherlord.
Cache in good condition and ready to be found

#5814. A very nice puzzle to work through. Pleased to get the tick first go. The final was a slightly different matter. Searched quite extensively at what we thought were the hint objects, but no luck there. Eventually widened the search to the other side of the track. Found after a little poking around. TNLNSL. TFTC.

With this weekends wild weather and a quick cache and grab at Colyton the only caching action this weekend decoded, and decided, to do this and a couple of other puzzle caches that have been blue question marking my Palmy map for much too long now.
Needed some help to see the light and get the co ordinates. I used another method myself for getting Stereogram I but this one was much harder and whilst waiting to solve was disabled, reworked, replaced and enabled again. Oh the life of a cache.
No problems at G Z today, a bit of nearby activity with dogs and people but I managed to retrieve, sign and replace before being able to wander off with no one any the wiser
Another nice puzzle t S and another smiley face on my map, can't be bad
T F T C

This was solved at long last by mr Z after a tip from anv1l - mrs Z is unable to see the pictures so just wrote down the results. It took us a few attempts before we got the green tick. Decided to go and sign the log today with mini z and miss z's friend. Took a while to find at GZ - our GPS was misbehaving but we got it in the end. TFTC and Thanks for the puzzle

took awhile to solve the puzzle,but got there in the end,cache was well hidden.tftc

Although I thought i could see the image I needed some help from Atoms7 to make any sense of it. She came up with the solution very quickly. Even with this information I couldn't work backwards to figure out the image. Maybe my eyes aren't magic enough. I was enjoying an afternoon walk with baby stardust when I passed by this one and quickly had the cache in hand. Well concealed and contents all dry. Thanks for an interesting puzzle, even if I couldn't solve it all on my own

Nice quick find for this one after reading the hint. Was given a clue to solve the stereogram and thankfully i have no problem focusing on and off these quickly. Found with Tommygun9. TFTC

This entry was edited by Atoms7 on Tuesday, 18 February 2014 at 07:32:17 UTC.

Managed to have this almost solved before it was replaced.
This ended our Sunday afternoon walk and just in time as it started raining on the way home.
Found with Atoms7.

Grabbed a TB to move on as this doesn't get found all that often.

I've been trying to find this one for weeks now, each time I take the dog for a swim. Looks like it has got me beat. I've looked under, over, up down and just can't find it (hope its actually still there). Oh well looks like it might be one for the to hard basket for me.... hee hee hee. TFTC anyway.

Yeah finally solved the puzzle (with a little help). Went to the spot twice yesterday and searched but no luck. Had to give up as it was getting dark. Will try again some time as this one is not going to beat me

Yay - at last! And a FTF at the new location. What perseverance it took to get us here. Re-energised by the chocolate and armed with the co-ords the C/O absolutely assured us were now correct, we decided to give it another go this morning. This time the cache was quickly in hand, with no problems at all. Great to have "knocked the b.st.rd off"! TNLN TFTC

"Ready to go again!" Yeah, right!
What a long, difficult undertaking this cache is proving to be for us. First there were the cross-eyed hours Mrs g. spent at the computer trying to sort that image. Then there was a new hide, so start over, not only with a new key, but also needing different approaches. Finally came the geocheck's congratulations - joy! Even so Mrs g. was a bit doubtful of the suitability of the location which she could see on GoogleEarth, so she emailed the C/O, but receiving reassurance all was fine we went to the verified spot. Our search there proved long, frustrating and friutless. And why? Because it turns out the C/O had inadvertently loaded the wrong co-ords into the puzzle and geocheck!! He hadn't even realised this when Mrs g. queried the location.
What are you supposed to do when the cache page, the geocheck and the C/O all confirm the cache is where it isn't?! [:(!] So after all our efforts we still don't have it, and there was nothing we could have done to get it right. Extremely disheartening.

Footnote: A box of chocolates..munch, munch...as an apology...chew, chew...has gone a certain way...munch, hmmmm... to sweetening us up again! Thanks, Tom, might even try for the cache again!

This entry was edited by geodatum on Saturday, 21 December 2013 at 07:20:30 UTC.

Ready to go again!

New hide found, new cache installed. TB added.

Great puzzle tftc!

Oops! I checked the wrong cache! Yes, the cache hide here has been burnt, and the cache too. I have to find a new home for this. In the meantime... sorry, guys.

Logged with permission by owner. Went with NZMunzey to find this but no luck - great spot but shame about some hooligans. Hope it gets sorted soon!

No evidence of fire, cache is intact. I think you went to the wrong place!

Logged with permission of the CO. Figured the puzzle out a little while back and after 4 trips and no lucks, emailed the CO and our worst fears were confirmed. Great spot though, stupid muggles.

Been to the cache location four times and with hints from previous finders and GPS. Cache spot seems to have been destroyed by fire. Please investigate

11651… Had an inkling on what we had to do but wasn’t sure we were using the right approach, a chance meeting with etherlord earlier in the week confirmed we were on the right track bar a few tweaks. Many thanks for a different perspective on puzzles. Still trying to adjust the eyesight.

With elderly, and in one case, colour blind, eyes, this was way beyond our capabilities, so we needed assistance from markhnz to establish the coordinates. The cache itself was a quick easy find, after a pleasant walk with our granddaughters just before the rain restarted. TFTC

TFTC, easy find after spending a nauseatingly long time staring at my squiggly computer screen. But got there eventually, and helped out the colour-blind kcoley.

Tftc was helped out by the one and only MAKESHlFT on this one due to my colour blindness

Fixed the coordinates and the geocheck. No longer have to subtract one.

I'm no good at stereograms, so I needed some help on this one.
Took my daughter on a walk this evening to find the cache.
Thanks.

Solved this last night and was hoping to get 2TF as a reversal of yesterday's FTF with all7ofusnz at Stereogram I.

Alas, twas not to be... pipped at the post by Rattl!
Good to see you again Jules

+TB,-TB,+FP!

Had wondered about the final being where it was, so was quite pleased to see the FTF's log correcting this.
Had just finished & was walking away when I noticed Etherlord go past, so went back to say hello.
He was dropping off a TB that had spent a lot of time in NZ, so I picked it up to pass on to my brother in law who's arriving tomorrow. He can take it back to the states.
Left a pet rock - a blue whale. TFTC

Dammit, all7ofusnz is corrrect. Once you have solved the puzzle, subtract 1 from the 5th digit of the East coordinate to get the cache location. Alas I am in Rotorua for a few days and do not have all my tools with me, but it will be fixed on the weekend.

In the face of great odds all I can say is ... Well done all7ofusnz!

The seagnoid

Worked this out step-by-step and was amazed to find that my first set of coordinates were actually correct - only after trying a couple of other combinations beforehand... Then I had to check them again as I forgot to write down the extra location notes. However the 'correct' coordinates turned out to be on the wrong side of the river in the middle of a Massey farm paddock (don't go there like I did). Used the extra location notes and a bit of map-work to find the cache back near the end of Maxwells Line, right on dusk - it seems that the fifth digit of the longitude is one greater than it should be?

Our first FTF and a TB to kick off our own trackable to boot - thanks Seagnoid! P.S. Left the Terrodactyl as he might not have survived the Lego Minifigure-mad junior cachers...

Published