Team HoneyBunnies Find 2000
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(regular)
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Here in the Mead Wildlife Area, you will be taking a beautiful, flat, easy walk for about a mile, looking for an Silver Ammo Box. This cache is to honor Team Honeybunnies, and their 2000 cache finds. In an effort to recognize those who pass a major milestone, many areas have a tradition of placing milestone caches. Team Honeybunnies and Onesearching2find and I came across a couple while caching in Illinois, hence the idea of moving that tradition here.
To get from the parking area, you can bike, canoe, or hike. The cache is exactly 1 mile from the parking area and it is a 1/1 walk all the way, and then the cache is right off of the trail. If you choose to canoe, you will be in a flat narrow river that is the Little Eau Pleine River. The cache is between the river and the trail, and the trail runs right along the river, within 10 to 20 feet.
No matter how you choose to travel, you will see lots of wildlife. The cache site itself is not special, but the walk getting back to it is awesome for the variety of animals and birds you will see. I saw turtles, grouse, herons, cranes, canvasbacks and heard lots of frogs. I even saw a bunny.
The cache is near Honey Island Flowage, my original desired cache site. However, Honey Island is a SNA, thereby preventing a cache placement there.
The George W Mead Wildlife area is over 30,000 acres of open marshes, hardwood and aspen forests mixed with greasslands. It is the third largest wildlife area in the state. According to the DNR, wildlife species here include deer, turkey, bear, otter, herons, praire chickens and foxes. There are also mosquitos here. At the Mead Education Center, just 1.3 miles from the cache site, is an interesting white board where folks write down what critters they saw during their visit to the Mead, so be sure to check that out. (There is also another cache that starts there.)
In the late 1800s loggers cut down the confier forests that carpeted the marsh along the Little Eau Pleine. Developers then attempted to drain the swamps of the valley with massive dredges. Farming was tried, and faild. In 1935 it was bought by a paper copmany who intended to use the land for a reservoir. Whent the reservoir idea was scraped in 1959, Consolidated Papers donated the land to the the State of Wisconsin, and now the DNR adminsters the land as a wildlife refuge.
BONUS CACHE: After walking a mile to get a smiley, what could be better than a bonus oppourtunity???? If you want to log the bonus cache, all ya got to do is put on the coconut vest in the cache container, and post a photo of yourself here.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Qbag sbetrg gb gnxr lbhe pnzren gb ybt gur obahf pnpur.