We almost called it a night after the cache on five mile hill and just let Haylee play in the park for a while. But the cache was only a few hundred feet away in the woods right next to the park! We let Haylee take a couple trips on the slide then set out to find Vantage Point. It turned out to be a killer few hundred feet! About 50 feet after entering the woodline on an “as the crow flies” path, we were greated with a fairly steep hill. After the killer climb, we came upon a service road. The service road went two directions… higher up the hill, or back down it. Wanting to avoid the possibility of climbing even higher only to find out the cache wasn’t on the hill at all, we went for the down hill route. We walked about 40% of the way around the hill never getting closer than 300 feet. We decided at that point that it had to be on top of the hill. Rather than the “crow flies” approach we took orginally, we took the service road to the top this time, ignoring the climbing numbers on the GPS. Once we got to the top of the hill, we zeroed in on where our coordinates from the previous finds of the night pointed us. After about 30 minutes of searching, we found the decoy. D’oh. Another 15 minutes or so came up with no luck on the real deal. Though in our defence, by the time we got to the top of the hill, it was quite dark out (which is why we almost didn’t attempt it). We’ll have to make that killer hike again in daylight hours.

PS. The coordinates on the map below are the same coordinates from the geocaching.com listing, not the real coordinates we pieced together.

Once we remember how to get up Five Mile Hill, Five Miles Out was a fairly quick find. It was also the last part of the puzzle we needed to try Vantage Point! After we found it, Haylee wanted to walk down the hill so her daddy decided he’d walk with her while her mommy drove the van around to the Y’s parking lot where we would set out on Vantage Point. Haylee only made it about half way down before giving up and wanting to be carried… but at 23 months, half-way down Five Mile Hill is quite a feat!

Following the lack of success at the pier, we went on to Paranormal Michigan #2 – Legends of the Hill to have another unsuccessful run. It sure seemed like the squirrels were attacking us with their acorns out there. As un upside, we did get to see a number of deer in the cemitary… a couple fairly close up, even, on our way out.

The next closest cache to us (as the bird flies, not necessarily on the road) after we finished the lookout was Take a long walk off a short pier. We’re typically not very good at micro caches (or multi-caches because they tend to start with micros), but we decided to give this one a shot anyway. After searching everplace would could think of near the coordinates for the first point, we gave up. Always disappointing to throw in the towel, but sometimes you just run out of ideas.

Our second vantage point clue came from Linear Lookout. This one was a fairly easy find. Haylee absolutely loved the coal that was poking through the fence from the eletric plant .

The evening of the 19th began with another trip to Rix’s Run… this time, however, it was a success! We got our first clue toward the Vantage Point cache.