Welcome to Whitmore Nature Preserve. This is a beautiful nature park near the community of Whitmore Lake, hence the name. The park sits on land donated to Washtenaw County by landowners in the area and is used for preservation/conservation of natural land including all the flora, fauna and wildlife. The overall property is an amalgamation of a few different properties donated by very generous folks in the area and you will see on the main signs exactly who donated what land. The park hours are dawn to dusk so please do not attempt at night. Anyways, this particular nature area contains around 1.8 miles or so of an unpaved trail system that manuevers around the property. At the entrance to the park sits the main trail that goes for about half a mile until you arrive at an open, hilly, grassland. The trail splits to the right and left each as the red trail.
The red trail is basically a loop around the open meadow. If you go right, you will make your way up the hill to the next trail marker where this splits into the green and blue sections of the trail as well as the option to continue on the red loop. The blue/green section amounts to just over 2/3 of a mile, depending on which way you go. Further North the trail branches off, this is the yellow loop. This loop is over half a mile long. Each color trail will have a mini series on it which will all combine to contribute to a final cache deeper in the park.
So this cache specifically is on the Yellow Trail loop. This part of the trail system will contain 5 hides that will be combined with the other series' for the final. This loop involves about 1 mile of hiking to get to it from the parking lot so keep that in mind. Each cache will be placed sequentially so spacing is taken into account so there will not too many caches too close together. The final number of caches combined from every trail will be about 14.
This particular cache is hidden just about 100ish feet off the trail in the middle of one of 4 preserved islands of land on this strech of the Yellow trail. Three of the islands are relatively close to the trail while the fourth and final one is a decent trek through the grassy field. Please be careful as there is very tall grass between the trail and GZ which means there could be dangerous insects such as ticks. I actually had a tick that landed on me while I was placing this, luckily I was wearing pants so I could just brush it off. Anyway, the container is a small camoed lock n lock box that has some toys and trinkets inside. A slight bushwhack may be necessary once you get to the island so be mindful of that. Be careful as there are a ton of thorns, poison ivy, and tallgrass so be sure to wear long pants. Also, please be stealthy as there are others that visit this park, please hide the cache back well. It is a very good idea to bring bug spray if you are attempting this in the summer/fall months as it can get quite buggy out here. Be sure to wear boots or closed toed shoes as there are quite a few muddy spots on the path. Feel free to message me if you get stuck, I will respond ASAP. Bring a pen as there is not one in the cache. Good Luck and Happy Caching :)
**Congrats to HelloLola on the FTF**