Friday was my reward day for staying away from sweets and snacks all week. My plans were to get the six counties that I needed on the east side of the state. I figured we weren't gonna get there by bike any more this year and I wanted to finish up this four year quest to get a cache in all of the LP counties.
So off I went - left home just after 7:30 a.m. I figured it would take at least two hours of driving to get to the first place I planned to go. Decided to take M-21 over instead of I-69 through Lansing. Figured I'd miss the rush hour traffic to Lansing that way. But it did turn out to be slower - it was close to three hours before I hit my first cache on the list (though I did stop for one on M-21 that was a new travel bug hotel on the way.)
First county: Macomb. Northeast of Detroit. Got off I-69 (I had met up with it in Flint) and took M-53 south, just over the county line from Lapeer Co. My destination was a cemetery cache. I was glad to find it, as I would have had to go about 5 miles farther south to pick up my backup cache. Then headed north again on the same road, passing through Lapeer County to Sanilac County.
Sanilac County's cache was also on 53, on the far western side of the county. It, too, was a cemetery cache, one that had just been out for a week. Surprisingly, I was only the second to find it. Wasn't a hard find, either. Again, glad it was there as I would have had to go about 10 miles east for the next closest one.
Then back down to M-46 and west into Tuscola County. I had several possibilities here as I passed through most of the county on my route. Ended up with three or four finds and one DNF. Cut across the corner of Saginaw County on M-15 heading northwest but no caches along that route. Got into Bay County and found several caches in Bay City, one was in a cemetery and one was an ALWAYS cache (WalMart parking lot.) Lots of construction in Bay City on the roads so didn't spend as much time as I might have otherwise. Got over to I-75 and headed north, stopped at a rest area cache and then got off at Pinconning Road and headed east to M-13.
Stopped in Pinconning for a quick late lunch at Subway (it was about 3 p.m. by now) and headed north into Arenac County. Just over the county line, stopped at a rest area and found the cache there. I was lucky that all three of the counties where I wanted to find the cache and then backtrack had me with quick finds each time!
South again on I-75 and got off in Saginaw (Saginaw County, of course.) Found several caches along the way so I was able to finish the six county quest. Now it's time to head for home. Wanted to get home before dark and (hopefully) Steve as he knew I was going caching but not necessarily that I was going this far. I did stop for some caches along M-57 on the way to Greenville, then headed home from there and got home about 7:30 p.m. Steve had beat me home but not by much. He didn't ask me any questions about my day, since he's not all that interested in caching.
12 hours of driving with 24 cache finds, lunch, and a gas stop to break up the ride. That made for a long day! But now I only have one county left, Oceana County, and that is close by Camp Gerber which I'll be visiting this weekend so it shouldn't be a problem!
No comments:
Post a Comment