A Very Mysterious Package

A month ago I received a mysterious package containing a message in a bottle, clippings, printed emails, a pendant marked with symbols, a message written in pictographs and a modern nautical map of part of a certain part of the world.  (I’m being intentionally vague to prevent this from being easily found via search engines.)

It appears to be some sort of puzzle-solving game surrounding a lost treasure.  Seeing as how it arrived soon after my birthday, and how my brother was acting coy in denial, it would appear to be a gift in the form a puzzle game to solve!  Looking on the web, I saw that others have received these packages many months ago and have formed groups to try to solve them.  However, I’ve avoided looking too hard on the web since I don’t want to spoil the fun of figuring it out.

More recently, I received a second package containing hand-drawn, pseudo-aged map fragments, a contract between pirates, pages from a diary and more printed emails.  So… aye!  We have lost treasure and pirates!

Darlene and I finally spent some time on this last weekend and found that solving the code puzzle in the first package ended up pointing to the longitude and latitude of an island that was then confirmed in a diary page from the second package.  Seems strange to me that it works this way – that a solved puzzle is simply revealed in the later package.  Instead, I would expect solving one puzzle would lead to the key to another puzzle, rather than being simply given away.  We’ll see, I guess.

Without giving too much away, the contents of the second package made it possible to use the message in the bottle and the amulet to pinpoint another location on the modern nautical map, so we’ll see what comes of it.  That appears to be all there is to figure out so far.  There clearly must be at least one more package coming.


Update: Yes, a third package has arrived!  This one is pretty cool too.  A wooden box retrieved from the sand, containing an animal horn with carvings on it, all wrapped in oil cloth:

  

Surprisingly though, the carvings on one side of the horn only confirm what we previously solved in the first two packages.  (Drawing of the lines on the map and interpreting the message-in-a-bottle as to how to project from the intersection points of those lines.)  On the other side, it does have a little treasure map of the island marking out a trail to follow but I don’t yet see what we can do with it.  And I’m pretty sure we’re not expected to fly out to the location to investigate the island in person.

Another package to come?


Update: Oh, yes.

  

And now several theories confirmed, regarding both the content and the intention of the packages – which I will refrain from divulging to avoid spoiling anything for anybody, except to say… very cool!  Also, I guess my title for this post was much more apropos than I could have known.

California Railroad Museum

For Darlene’s birthday this year, we went to Old Town Sacramento for the weekend and stayed on the steamboat-turned-hotel “Delta King”.  We spent a good part of Saturday checking out the fantastic California Railroad Museum which makes up almost all of the pictures in my gallery:

   

No pictures, but we also spent time wandering around Old Town and checking out the shops.  That afternoon we participated in another “escape room” and successfully solved “The Study” at Escape Sacramento and then, after dinner, went to a fun play put on by the B Street Theater in town.  (Take note: skip the Suspects Mystery Dinner Theater option on the Delta King – it gets terrible reviews on Yelp and TravelAdvisor.)  Sunday was filled with a long bike ride out and back along part of the 30+ mile bike trails along the American River.

National Automobile Museum

Darlene and I visited the fantastic National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada (“The Harrah Collection”) recently.  This is a cool place and definitely worth a trip to visit, even for non-car aficionados.  It’s super-easy to get caught up and lose several hours in this place checking out the hundreds of vintage vehicles.  It’s fun to see and learn how things evolved so haphazardly from the original notions of the “horseless carriage”.  It’s quite an amazing collection and full of surprises.

  

Spruce Goose

While up in Portland, Oregon this past weekend for my brother’s birthday, Glenn, Michele and I made a day’s excursion to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, the current home of the “Spruce Goose” and a huge variety of other aircraft.  All pretty cool and definitely a worthwhile visit, but it’s a little annoying that they charge extra (and separately) for tours inside two of the aircraft: a B-17 bomber (“Flying Fortress”) and the Spruce Goose itself.

Click through for pictures:

   

A Day in the Future

I really liked this: “A Day in the Future”

I can get instructions on how to do pretty much anything that has ever been done. I can summon complete histories of almost any person or culture you could name, expert opinions on anything at all, unlimited advice, unlimited entertainment, unlimited information. I can buy pretty much anything from where I’m sitting, and have it brought to my door.

I can even write anything I want and publish it myself. I don’t need permission or credentials. The whole world could read it.

These are true superpowers, only we don’t call them that because they’re completely normal. Almost everyone has access to this kind of power. Yet somehow many people complain of boredom, or of not having enough power.

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