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| Our typical view forward (from a standstill) for a disgusting percentage of our 750-mile drive to Michigan |
Kimberly B.’s cousins in Michigan had planned a family reunion for this weekend, and so we decided some time ago that we would attend. With flights being crazy expensive, we opted to drive, as we have several times in the past. What we hadn’t done was drive to Michigan at the height of highway construction season. Our plan was similar to our previous road trips here: leave home and head to Ripley, WV; stay the night at the handy-dandy Super 8 Motel there; and then drive the rest of the way the following day. Ordinarily, this makes for a 12- to 14-hour trip, including occasional stops. Thanks to countless construction holdups, the inevitable accidents, and miles-long traffic jams courtesy of too many motherfucking people, we ended up with a damn near 18-hour drive.
Bloody exhausting. At least I managed to find a handful of decent geocaches along the way, and we listened to an audiobook (Casino Royale) and some fun 70s and 80s music to mitigate the frustration. It rained most of the way on Thursday, but at least it wasn’t blinding. Friday’s drive felt like the endless traffic jam from hell since we easily spent as much time crawling (or motionless) as we did moving at a clip. After a particularly egregious delay just north of Ann Arbor, Brugger suggested we stop at a nearby Mexican Restaurant and have an early dinner (along with a margarita for good measure). That was just enough to help us mellow out, and, finally, we made that last couple of hours to her folks’ place in Midland without undue delay.
Saturday, August 5
The family reunion was to kick off at noon, so at 11:30 a.m., Kimberly,
Del, Fern, and I set out for the backcountry around Loomis, MI, about a half
hour from Midland. I’d met only a couple of her cousins before, so for me,
this was mostly a gathering of strangers, but the decent food and company made
for a relaxing enough event.
This date is my dear, late friend “Old Rob” Isenhour’s birthday, so a while back, friend Scott (a.k.a. Diefenbaker) and I organized a geocaching event to be held today to commemorate his life and myriad contributions to our geocaching community. At the time, I didn’t recall our commitment to Ms. B’s family reunion. So, since I couldn’t attend Rob’s birthday event in person, Scott arranged for me to pipe in with a video call at 2:00 p.m. As the reunion drew to a close, I hoofed it down the long dirt road to a find nearby geocache, and at ground zero, I attempted to make the call. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t go through. Fortunately, once we got back to Casa di Brugger, the call worked, so Ms. B. and I were able to virtually attend the event for a time. It turned out to be the biggest gathering of local geocachers in years, featuring many old-timers who haven’t been active in years. That warmed my old heart since Rob had been such a noteworthy figure, both in my life and in our community.
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| Old Rodan on the hunt |
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| A right purty view from GZ |
For the evening, Ms. B.’s longtime friend, Linda, formerly of Midland, and her daughter, Hayley, who were visiting from Illinois, joined us for drinks and dinner at Whichcraft, a nice downtown establishment featuring Michigan-made spirits of all varieties. As it turned out, this was also the weekend for Midland’s annual River Days celebration, which drew a sizable crowd downtown. Happily, we managed to find easy parking, relatively mellow surroundings, and more refreshments at nearby Grape Beginnings, a fine local winery/wine bar that Brugger and I make a point to visit whenever we’re here. Linda and Hayley proved excellent company, and we ended up closing down the wine bar. Toward the end of the evening, we bore witness to what I would call the most spectacular fireworks display I’ve ever experienced. For a full half-hour, the myriad explosions lit the sky without even a few seconds pause. Apparently, River Days provides quite the blast here in Midland.
Sunday, August 6
I haven’t been a churchgoing soul for many years, but Del & Fern
invited Kimberly and me to join them for the morning service at
Midland Nazarene, and so... off to church we went. Theirs is what I would call a “modern”
kind of service, with a band, contemporary music, and prerecorded video
messages (which I found ironic since these focused on building personal
connections) in addition to traditional churchy things. In the end, to quote
the infamous
Dr. Franklin Ruehl, it was better than being slapped in the belly with a wet trout. How about
that?
The weather was drizzly and dreary all day, but Kimberly and I ventured out to grab lunch for the family from KFC, followed by a second outing to a downtown knick-knack shop she likes and then Live Oak Coffeehouse for some hot (or in her case, cold) refreshment. I stopped to hunt a nearby cache, but by all indications, the bloody thing was missing. It rained real water on me.
As is our custom when we don’t have other plans, Ms. B. and I spent the evening relaxing with the folks, mostly watching various TV shows in the family room. This was also better than the wet trout treatment.This evening’s plan was for me to make dinner — meatloaf, at Del & Fern’s request — which meant I needed to go shopping at Meijer. However, I couldn’t bring myself to go shopping at Meijer without first going geocaching. So, I set out on this somewhat dreary morning (which, happily, turned undreary within an hour or so) to hunt some of the local hides I hadn’t yet found. I had mixed success. A couple of very tough ones eluded me (both of which I’ve hunted before; they eluded me then, too); several others I found without difficulty. All this amounted to about three miles of hoofing it on a comfortable morning, so I’m a happy cacher. Then I went to Meijer and picked up the dinner stuff (and some sushi for lunch, which was pretty awful; I should have known better than to buy Meijer sushi).
Tuesday, August 8
Our housesitter gave us a somewhat reassuring report this morning, but I think we’re still going to head home a day early. There’s nothing we can really do from here anyway, so we’ll have to enjoy our remaining time as best we can. Thus, after breakfast, I set my sights on the nearby community of Sanford, where a goodly number of caches awaited my attention. One of them was at a neat little covered bridge at the Sanford Centennial Museum, a cache I had hunted before — as my attempted 14,000th find — but it turned out to be missing at the time. It has since been replaced, so this morning, I was finally able to stake my claim. I also went after a trio of Adventure Lab caches, two of which were at the museum; I hiked and hunted along the Pere Marquette Rail Trail for a couple of miles; and I found caches at a couple of neat old graveyards. Once done, I put in three miles of hiking and logged a total of 26 caches. Not too shabby.
I set out bright and early this morning on yet another geocaching quest, this time bound for Freeland, a little community a few miles southeast of Midland. I had picked up a handful of Freeland caches in years past, but today I managed to put a pretty good dent in the total. A couple of graveyard caches had caught my eye — both of which I had previously visited on hunts for older caches. Sadly, I had not been successful on those hunts because the caches were missing, and, even more sadly, I had no better luck today — and I’m pretty sure it’s because these newer hides, too, have gone missing. Still, I had a mighty fine time, and I added another 14 to my total find count, which now stands at 14,420.
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| On the hunt in Pine Grove Cemetery |
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| Pick a hole. Any hole. |
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| A little covered footbridge at Memorial Park |
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| A lovely day at West Side Cemetery |
I realized yesterday that I had left my hiking stick near a cache the other day, and so, figuring it would probably still be there, I went out there this morning — and yes, there it was. So it was nice to recover that stick. Old Rob gave me that stick many years ago, and so it carries with it a little more meaning than just any old hiking pole. Anyhoo, since I was out, I headed after a handful of nearby caches, including one in the deep, dark underground, which is one of my favorite types of hides.
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| Heading in... |
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| The cache |