MISummerFun23 - MI Inventions - Road Striping Traditional Cache

Welcome to the second MI_SUMMER_FUN series. The 2023 season focuses on Michigan Inventions. Hopefully you enjoy our series. This year, we have 16 total caches; 15 traditional hides plus a bonus cache. To find the bonus cache, be sure to take note of the bonus information at each of the stops. Be sure to record the punctuation and capitalization correctly. At the end, plug everything into the phrase shown below and the bonus coordinates should be revealed!

This cache is located in the Wittenbach Center. The trails are open daily from dawn to dusk. Please stay on the trails until you are near the cache. We want to respect the natural areas and we do not want you to end up in one of the swamps that are back here.

Putting stripes on roads! Now, where did that idea come from? Apparently from Edward N. Hines, a Michigan native, who was inspired after watching a milk wagon that had developed a leak, make its way down a road. Mr. Hines was the Chairman of the Wayne County Board of Roads and he thought that lines would be a great help with traffic flow. His idea did indeed keep traffic on the correct side of the road and the reports of accidents in the area went down greatly. In 1972, Mr. Hines was inducted into the Michigan Transportation Hall of Honor for his great idea.

After the success of the white lines in the Detroit area, the idea spread throughout the state and then to other states and finally to other countries. Eventually, yellow was introduced as the stripe color because it was thought to be more visible than white (this from an officer out West). Dotted lines became popular because states could save money on paint by using this system! Eventually, the system we have in place today came into being and now, we all know what a solid yellow or a dashed yellow line means! When we've hosted exchange students, we've learned that not every country uses yellow. One of our students was very puzzled by the yellow lines – he was accustomed to seeing white lines. Whatever the color though, these lines of the road have helped drivers stay in their lane for over a century now.