Memorial Weekend: Our Thumb Adventure

Saturday of Memorial Day weekend dawned, and the weathermen were wrong. It was sunny with blue skies, a light breeze and in the 70's. Perfect weather for an adventure!

With no real plan in mind, TaGeez and I decided on a driving tour of "The Thumb". Yes, Michigan is shaped like a mitten and Michiganders give directions by pointing out spots on their hand. When my sister & I went to Galena last week she pointed out she was off her map!

(Source: Wikipedia)

The Thumb is known for it's peaceful country roads through farmland leading to the beautiful, blue waters of Lake Huron. We had a vague notion of site seeing, shopping and grabbing lunch on our road trip.

And, of course, geocaching. Our first stop was a fitting one - a Veterans Memorial in Sanilac County. We were able to make finds in 4 counties - filling out TaGeez's map on Project-GC.

Veterans Hill GC2Z3HW

We just missed the ceremony at the Sanilac Cemetery and the parade in Bad Axe. We did make it to the quilt shop before they closed. No enticing caches nearby, though.

Taking a wrong turn in Albuquerque... er.... Bad Axe, we ended up at Harbor Beach. Funny thing about Michigan, even taking a wrong turn you eventually hit water. We grabbed a special Multicache (Finally! Stage 1 and the final were 100+ miles apart!) and then headed to Pointe aux Barques Lighthouse on the tip.

We met some lovely ladies who stamped my lighthouse passport in the gift shop and then enjoyed taking pictures near the water's edge. We also grabbed Keepers of the Light where TaGeez found it humorous in taking his time to sign the log while I was knee-deep in the greenery. Did I mention the two boys behind us who just found a pair of live snakes?

Keepers of the Light GCKXFC

While leaving the lighthouse we received  a message from Mibbs and family (dear friends we met through geocaching) who were at their cabin near Caseville. We turned our car westward to join them for dinner, still grabbing caches on the way. It's fabulous having a geocaching friend who understands "geocaching time"!

We didn't want to miss the Michigan Lost Town Cache Series (MLT). "The Michigan's Lost Towns Cache Series has now celebrated Twelve years of existence! This cache series was created to promote geocaching in towns that have little to nothing left. It has spread from the middle of the mitten to the Upper Peninsula and continues to expand!"

MLT - Huron City GC30PAT

For many of these towns, the geocaches are sometimes the only remains of a once-thriving community. Be sure the read the geocache pages.

MLT - Historic Grindstone City GC30DD6

Many of these towns disappeared as the lumber boom ended. Flooding and disease wiped out many towns, too.

MLT - Village of Port Crescent GC26KQ8

We also had to stop for several of Mibb's geocaches, too. Nobody Beats Walt's Meat and Your girlfriend will love Walt's Meat  are two of my favorite signs at our next stop!

Poor Walt GC3K7RT

Here's the beaches near  The Yeps GC3QF1G in Sleeper State Park.

TaGeez, Scrapcat, and Mibbs

As they day wound down, TaGeez and I stopped off in a park near Caseville to enjoy the lovely sunset.

An amazing way to end our day!

Meads Mill - Forgotten Years Cache Challenge

What an adventure! What teamwork! TaGeez and I had seen the Meads Mill listing quite some time ago, but we’ve never been in the area with time and/or daylight. Working on GSIX’s Forgotten Years Cache Challenges, this one was even more tempting.

Meads Mill - a remnant of the Village of Waterford

This afternoon TaGeez and I found ourselves cruising the Plymouth area, heading towards the Canton Meet. Remembering this nearby and, as it hadn’t been found in almost 11 months, we turned around. The lot was super muddy (but that’s OK – I have new Wellies!) and super icy (what a weird winter!). Flanking from different directions, we approached the GZ.

If there's a tree, he's going to climb it.

TaGeez climbed high and I scouted low. Nothing. We circled the GZ repeatedly. I started scouting logs and reached out to an Angel – still no luck. We could see, according to the CO’s logs, that ‘half of ground zero had collapsed’. Yes, that’s an accurate assessment. Looking up, I could see TaGeez dangling precariously over the edge of his new “stand” reaching into every gap, crevice and hole he could find. I was dangling below, balancing on ice-encased roots dodging downed limbs. 

Resting and checking the GPS again

Ok, time to get methodical. From what I’ve read, the cache shouldn’t be under the foot of snow we were trampling. While TaGeez explored outer limbs and logs, I circled the GZ, scanning, touching, and yanking every inch surface at my eye level. I had a harder time as I crouched under the broken half, but, looking slightly up, I noticed something odd.

Reaching my hand up into the cavity and then pushing forward out of sight, there was a little give. I started working my fingers, inching forward until… is that ice or plastic? Worrying away at the surrounding hole, debris cascading atop my head, I enlarged the hole bit by bit. Ice? Plastic? This was hard as the sheer weight and solidness of the broken GZ meant reaching up and in at a very tough angle – no room to maneuver so the work was very slow. Finally, confirmation! That was plastic IN ICE! The container was iced in place!

TaGeez giving a power shove with his fingertips

I called TaGeez down from above. I had made enough room for him to work his hand in there and, with a powerful shove, he broke the container from the ice block. Peering up in there, we realized that the brutal winter had weighted down the broken half so the hidey-hole was compressed down on top of the cache container and the “hole” was now just a sliver. What to do? The weight of the down trunk was massive! But we found the dang cache and weren’t leaving without our smiley! 

Like a frenzied mad woman, I kept digging into the rotted wood, breaking off clumps of wood and worrying the hole. 1/3 open! 

1/3rd open! This probably took 20 minutes of excavating the hole.
You can see the trunk compressing the container!  

We could see the color of the container! TaGeez retreated to the car to grab a knife (you know… now that I think about it…. why didn’t we grab the tire iron?). Between him cutting the scaly bark pressing into the hole and me scooping out the debris, we could see half the container! The hardest part was the last chunk because ice had seeped into the rotting wood so it was solid as concrete. Between TaGeez’s knife, several broken sticks and my broken nails, we finally cracked that last chunk! With just enough room to barely grab the lid, we jostled the container until we could eek it out of it’s chamber.

We enlarged the hole to replace the container for the next hider
To take this picture, I'm standing under the broken half of the tree

Exhausting! Between scouting and excavating, it took us an hour. As we signed the log, the sun was going down, and it was getting colder. We enlarged the hole some more before replacing the container, and then we camouflaged it for the next finder.

A remnant of Mead's Mill

Afterwards, with tired arms and ice-coated legs, we wondered over to the Mill and enjoyed the beautiful view and peaceful burbling of the waterfall. Unfortunately, the sun was so low at this point that we couldn’t take any decent pictures. 

Mead's Mill

Beautiful but cold

We'll return another day
TaGeez on the few remaining Mill steps

We will be back. How many people pass this daily and miss this experience?