Road Trip East

We left around 9 or 9:30 on a beautiful "Spring" day with blue skies and sunshine. Drove across the State - our first caching stop was in Mio at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Woods. This shrine is the most elaborate and strange I've ever seen (although I must admit I don't spend much time at shrines). See link above.

We had lunch at Harrisville at a place called "The Flour Garden". The food was really good, and the waitress was a character out of a bad novel.

Lake Huron was blue, blue, blue - absolutely beautiful. When we got to Alpena, Thunder Bay was blue, blue, blue as well. We were surprised at how much snow they had. It was especially deep in the woodsy areas - on one trail, Dick waded through snow over his boot tops. The cached was buried, but luckily he found it by poking around with his walking stick.

We stayed at the Best Western in Alpena, and ate dinner at Mr. D's Steakhouse which was right across the parking lot. I learned from a lady on a cell phone at the next table that we were eating at Best Western. Poor Mr. D.

We did a total of 7 caches - 3 in Alpena, 2 in Harrisville, and 2 in Mio. Our favorite was in downtown Alpena near a city park. The cache was hidden in an old pipe which had been sawed off at ground level. The container fit right down into the pipe and was really hard to see. We had to use the hint because it was so well concealed. The funny thing about it was that there were muggles taking continuous cigarette breaks behind the pizza shop across the alley. We had to be very stealthy and covert - at one time actually parking our car in front of the pipe so we could not be seen. Lord only knows what they thought we were doing. While we were twiddling our thumbs waiting for them to go inside, a delivery man delivered pizzas on three different trips. It took us a while. I think geo-cachers could work for the CIA. Maybe.