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 4 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 cache is the final hide of the Yellow Trail hidden just about 25ish feet off the trail on the Eastern most point of the Yellow trail loop. The container is a large lock n lock box that holds a plethora of toys and trinkets. If you take one, please leave one of equal or greater value. A slight bushwhack may be necessary once you get close to GZ 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**