The Village of Empire is named after a ship although there is some controversy as to which one. The side wheel steamer Empire ran aground here in 1849, and the schooner Empire was trapped in the ice here for the winter of 1865. Today Empire is the site of the headquarters and Visitor Center of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. (Not to mention The Friendly Tavern)
The Michigan Shore-To-Shore Trail begins at Lake Michigan in Empire and ends more than 200 miles east at Lake Huron near Oscoda.The trail was created and is maintained by the Michigan Trail Riders Association in cooperation with the DNR. Closed to motorized traffic, it passes through meadows and forests where possible and uses roadside shoulders where necessary.
Find and copy the number codes contained in all of the containers in this 14 cache series. They will allow you to find and unlock the Hopkins Creek cache and complete the Geochallenge.
Commemorative high quality S2S T shirts have been created and will be presented to ten members of the first teams to complete the challenge. To be eligible, the members receiving shirts must all have participated in the quest and must all be present and listed when logging finds. After the complimentary T shirts have been awarded, shirts will be available for purchase by additional challenge finishers for their cost plus shipping.
The first stage is a laminated tag located on a tree branch. It contains the code for the final and the coordinates to a one quart clear plastic container containing a log book which is hidden along the trail approximately two and a half miles to the east. You may park along M72 and walk a short distance down the trail to the cache.
The fourteen caches in the S2S Geo-challenge are;
Empire, Garey Lake, Lake Dubonnet, Sheck's Place,Rapid River, Goose Creek,4 Mile,Luzerne,McKinley,Gabions,South Branch,River Road,Oscoda,
And the final at Hopkins Creek
