A type of frosting was the clue that led Michael Gerrell to Beaver Ponds Park on his hunt to find the Golden Spike.
The Hugo resident happens to work for DecoPac, a cake decorating company in Anoka, so he is up on all things frosting. Clue No. 6 alluded to “frosting on the cake;” Fondant is a street along Beaver Ponds Park and fondant is a type of icing commonly used on decorative cakes.
He found Spike around 4 p.m. Saturday hidden inside a cattail stem near the pond on the north end of the park.
“At first, I was thinking it was in Diamond Point Park,” Gerrell said. On Saturday, he headed to Beaver Ponds; except there were only a handful of people searching the park, causing him to second guess himself.
“I was worried I wasn’t in the right place because there were only three people when normally there’s a crowd. I was starting to doubt if I was in the right place.” Then he basically “stumbled on the prize.”
“It was hidden in some dead weeds. Something just looked out of place,” Gerrell said. “So I grabbed a chunk of weeds that didn’t look right and there it was. I called the kids and told them to run to me so I could show them Spike. They got to split the $100 for helping.”
An eight-year resident, this is Gerrell’s sixth year of hunting Spike. He’s been close a couple times, he said. And yes, he had his Golden Ticket stamped by sponsoring businesses, which netted another $300 in cash plus $550 in gift cards.
“My wife thought I was crazy going around getting stamped,” Gerrell added. “She didn’t think I was going to find it.”
Businesses would ask if he wanted a map so he figured it must be important. There was a “second-best” line in the sixth clue; he thought that meant the No. 2 park on the city map, which was Beaver Ponds.
— Debra Neutkens
Copyright 2015 Hugo Citizen.
