Visiting any Earth Cache is more than just "Logging A Find". It is
an "Earth Science Lesson", and I hope you will enjoy mine.
A Confluence, in geography, describes the meeting of two or more
bodies of water. It usually refers to the point where a tributary
joins a more major river.
A body of water that flows down a slope along a channel
restricted by adjacent banks and levees is called a River. A River
starts at a point called its source, and enters a sea or lake at
its Mouth.
Along its length it may be joined by smaller rivers called
tributaries; A river and its tributaries are contained within a
drainage basin called the watershed. The point at which two or more
rivers join, is called the Confluence.
These particular waters (East & South branches of the Paw
Paw rivers) eventually find their way to Lake Michigan, one of the
5 great lakes surrounding the State of Michigan and also bordering
the States of Wisconsin,Indiana,Ohio and portions of Canada
This feature is located in Paw Paw, a village in Van Buren
County, Michigan.
The posted coordinates should take you to the center of this
structure.
BEFORE you log this cache
you must:
1) On the cache page, post a
picture of your face, your GPS, and the bridge over Red Arrow
Highway (Main Street) in the background from the posted
coordinates.
2) Determine the flow rate in
"Feet Per Second" for the main river after the emergence of the
East branch into the South branch of both rivers. This may be done
by measuring (bring a tape measure) & marking a distance along
the main riverbank, then tossing in a leaf/stick from your starting
point(posted coordinates). With a stopwatch (a lot of GPS’s have
the stopwatch function), time how long it takes your leaf/stick to
complete your measured distance course.
I determined this by using the length of the wood rail just
before the river goes under the Red Arrow Highway bridge. Then
calculate that into "Feet Per Second". Please email me your FPS
result thru my profile and not on the cache page.
Park closes at 10pm.