Morning Monster Mash

The 3 letterboxes in this series are part of a 15-box collection of boxes originally planted for the 2006 MI Fall Mystery Gathering (Cereal City Circus). The boxes are located at Fort Custer State Park in Battle Creek, MI.

A few additional notes:

• Much of Fort Custer Recreation Area is open to small game hunting this time of year. The ranger assures me they have not had an accident with a hunter and a hiker, but please be careful out there!
• Many of the trails at Fort Custer are shared with bicyclists and horses – watch for road apples and step to the side of the trail when bikes come through (or they will run you down).
• There is a lot of poison ivy in some areas of the park, so be careful as you hike and seek the letterboxes.

Clues…

On a sunny fall afternoon Frankenberry, Boo Berry and Count Chocula took off in search of a spot to hold their annual Monster Mash. Since they were sure the party would be rowdy, they headed as far away as the park road would take them. There they found a beautiful lake and a sandy trail heading from the parking area at 130 degrees.

They walked along the lake for a while before the trail turned away and took them through various landscapes – meadow, pine forests… After some time, they reached the intersection with a paved trail that looked like it had at one time been a road. Thinking that they had come back far enough, they started looking for nice hiding spots. Hoping to get lucky, they left the intersection, following the horseshoe and followed the trail until they came upon another horseshoe. This time a side path off to the left looked promising so they followed it as far as they could go. They looked around a little and decided it was a good spot. Boo volunteered to stay back while Frank and the Count looked a bit more. Boo spotted a fallen log at 325 degrees and slipped inside the hollow end, waiting for the others to return.

Frank and the Count headed back to the horseshoe intersection. They decided to follow the path at 275 degrees to a place that looked familiar, where they took a left. They walked through an area of creepy hanging evergreens, came out into a meadow area and then entered back into an area of brightly colored deciduous trees after rounding a hairpin turn. A short distance up the trail, they spotted something not natural to the forest on their left. Proceeding to the place on the trail where this object lay at 60 degrees, they noted a clearing on their right. They followed the clearing path 50 paces to a place where a 3-trunk poplar tree stood on the left and agreed this would also be a great spot. Frank volunteered to wait here while the Count went further up the trail. Frank spotted a fallen log at 155 degrees and slipped under it to wait for the Count to return.

The Count headed back out to the main trail and continued in a southerly direction. After passing through an area of large evergreens he could see the lake through the trees on the other side of the open field. The trail turned to the north and then rounded a hairpin turn as it headed up root steps. He walked for a while in a southerly direction until he came to the intersection with a less defined trail on his right. At 255 degrees he spotted another good spot and headed over to investigate. Hmmm, I think I’ll just rest for a minute right here in the end of this fallen tree.

Fish Out of Water 7

This letterbox is a joint placement between FungusWoman and SpringChick. The stamp was carved by FungusWoman; the log was added by SpringChick, who planted and maintains the box.

Getting There…

At a park that now occupies the property once owned by a Muskegon Hotel Proprietor, remnants of the former homestead are still evident, including the cement pad where the boat house once stood, an old stairway, several sections of foundation and a sunken cement vault that was the former fish pond. Make your way to this park and locate the cement pond.

Clues…

This is a story of Wyatt, the fish. For years Wyatt spent his days swimming back and forth in the cement pond. The trees overhead provided shade from the hot summer sun and cool lake breezes kept his water from getting too warm. If he listened carefully, he could hear the surf from Lake Michigan waves lapping at the shoreline not far from the fish pond. The man often came to sit by the pond and on Wednesdays the gardener gave him fresh water.

Eventually the man stopped coming around to sit by the cement pond and Wyatt wondered if perhaps he had taken ill. Not too long after that, strange people began stopping by with a man in a suit, talking in hushed tones, asking questions about acreage and lake frontage. The gardener stopped coming on Wednesdays and the water in the cement pond dried up. Every night as the moon reflected brightly off the lake, Wyatt dreamed of finding water. And so one day he leapt up out of the cement pond and decided to head off in search of water.

Out of the walls of the cement pond, the world suddenly looked very different, and very big. Wyatt spotted a sandy path at 300 degrees. It looked like it headed down a hill so he thought perhaps that was the way toward the water. He tumbled down the hill and then veered left a bit, ending at the foot of a small maple tree. From here the path went left and the path went right. As he was sitting there trying to decide which way to go, he saw people walking to the left and decided it would be safer to head right. He followed the path through a meadowy area, searching for water. At the edge of the woods, the low, outstretched arm of a locust tree welcomed him, but still he did not see any sign of water. To the east he spotted a path that headed up a hill filled with beach grass. Perhaps there was water that way — at the very least he might be able to get a view of the area from the top of the hill. So up he climbed, through the dune grass, past the funky pine trees, to the top where a big, straight pine tree stood at 190 degrees. From here he saw Lake Michigan to the west. Following the running root of the big pine tree, he headed along the path.

And then he heard it, faintly at first, then louder — a cat! Quickly he looked around for a place to hide. Standing at the place where the root disappeared into the sand, he spotted a fallen tree at 160 degrees, just a few feet from the trunk of a standing dead tree. The arm of the fallen tree seemed to be saying something, its broken arm pointing up toward the sky. But how to get to it? He headed up the trail a bit and found a side path that lead him there. “Good,” Wyatt thought, “there is a nice little hollow spot under here… looks like a perfect place to hide until that cat is gone.”

But little did Wyatt know he was hearing a catbird, not a cat, and since the bird was nesting in a nearby thicket the meowing sounds continued day after day after day. And so he continues to hide at the base of the fallen tree, longing for water, waiting for the cat to pass.

Sugarbowl

Site Notes…

At the entrance to Muskegon State Park stands a large sand dune, known locally as the “Sugarbowl.” In the winter it is a favorite sliding hill for area young people, although it is quite a hike back up the hill between trips! Don’t worry, you don’t have to climb the hill (well, at least not the whole way up)!

This box is located in Muskegon State Park. A Michigan State Parks vehicle pass is required for entry and can be purchased at the park. Please check the park web site for dates and hours of operation.

Getting There…

Follow Memorial Drive west toward Muskegon State Park. Where Memorial Drive ends at Lake Michigan, turn left. Across from the guard station at the entrance is a small turn-out, with a large sand hill visible in the distance. You will need to pick up the trail at the turn-out, however it is posted, “no parking” here. Parking is available just up the road in the beach lot.

Clues…

“Hey let’s go sliding after school,” Ralphie caught up with me in the lunchroom, as an early winter snowstorm gusted outside the window and dumped fluffy white stuff on top of the couple inches that had fallen the day before.

“Do you think there is enough snow on the hill?” I asked, referring to the infamous Sugarbowl, a huge sand hill at the State Park where the local kids went sliding.

“Yeh, I heard some kids saying they were there last night and it was great!”

“Okay, but I have a few chores to do first before my mom will let me go.”

Ralphie made a face and said, “Well I’ll meet you there then, at 4:00.”

“Okay, where do you want to meet?”

“Meet me at that tree that kind of stands there all by itself, in the middle, at the bottom of the big hill,” Ralphie said.

“Okay…” I answered a bit hesitantly. Being new to the area just last year, I had only been to the Sugarbowl a couple of times, and wasn’t quite sure I knew the tree Ralphie was talking about. I remembered that there were three hills, with the big hill in the back being the one everyone went sliding on, but it seemed to me it was a bit tricky how to get back there without climbing up and down the front two hills.

“Remind me how to get there,” I said.

“Take the trail from the turn-out, up along the left ridge of the front hill. When you get to the tree that’s twisty like a pretzel stick, go down into the woods and follow the trail that runs in the valley all the way around the back of the first hill and along the edge of the second hill. You’ll see the tree from there; just follow the path down the back of the second hill into the clearing to get there.”

“Sounds easy enough,” I answered confidently. Although I couldn’t quite picture it in my mind, I was sure it would make sense once I got there. “I’ll meet you there at 4:00,” I said as the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch hour.

I hurried home from school and completed my chores as quickly as possible, anxious to get to the hill. “Mom, I’m going sliding,” I called as I headed out to the garage to get my sled down from the wall brace where it had hung all summer.

Ralphie’s directions ran through my head as I arrived at the park and started down the path from the turn-out… I followed the ridge to my left along the edge of the front bowl and immediately saw the twisty-trunk tree up ahead. Taking the path down into the trees, I picked up the trail that headed to my right along the valley. After a bit, the trail broke out of the trees and wrapped around the back of the front hill, where it turned to the left toward the middle hill. It was all beginning to look familiar now. I could see the meeting tree in the distance and I anxiously walked up along the ridge of the middle hill to the path that led down the back side. Up ahead, past the tree, the big hill was filled with kids and sleds and even a couple of dogs.

I arrived at the meeting tree promptly at 4:00 p.m. Ralphie was not there yet, and I sat down on my sled to rest for a minute, looking anxiously around, hoping that I was at the right tree. Spotting another, bigger tree standing kind of by itself, just north of where I was, I headed across the path about 30 paces to wait there.

As I waited impatiently for Ralphie, I noticed a lot of commotion up on the ridge of the hill, 100 degrees from where I was sitting. Tired of waiting, I hiked over to see what was going on. As I neared the bank of the hill, I asked a man what had happened.

“There was a kid racing a big guy in a red snowsuit down the hill, and they collided and came sliding right up the side of the hill here into the trees. The kid is all tangled up in the roots of that tree up there.” The man answered, pointing ahead into the crowd of onlookers, to a tree, whose gnarly roots clung to the ridgeline, with several inches protruding over the path, creating a tangled mess of roots and hollow cavities.

I pushed my way in past the crowd, and there was Ralphie, wedged in a tight crevice between two thick fingers of root.

Mystery Mink

This box was planted in honor of a beautiful, but aggressive, chocolate-colored mink that chased me down the beach one day after I stumbled on his nesting spot.

Clues…

Just recently I moved into my new home here along the water. We minks tend to move around a lot and I was getting restless at the old place, so I decided it was time for a change and wanted to get settled in before winter. I looked at several places along the lake here in West Michigan, and finally it came down to choosing between a place up north near Stoney Lake and this place. The critters that lived in this cozy little burrow before me were very tidy and I just moved right in.

It really is a nice place, with large boulders for walls and a clean sandy floor. Outside my door are grass-covered sand hills and two small popple saplings that provide shade from the mid-day sun. The lake is only about 25 feet down the path so I can swim and fish whenever I want. I have great views from here — lake sunsets to the west, a desolate stretch of State Park beach to the north and if I stand on my tippy-toes on my roof, I can see the top of the lighthouse across the channel at about 30 degrees east of due south. The street I live on is a gently curved rocky breakwall that acts as the northern arm around a harbor where lake meets lake. There isn’t much traffic here, just an occasional early morning fisherman and sometimes kids from the campground playing hide and seek among the rocks in the summer.

Because I don’t see a lot of people, my attention was piqued the other day when I noticed a woman walking toward my street from the beach parking area. There was a camera around her neck and I figured she was just a tourist coming to take pictures of the lighthouse. But not long after she had climbed up onto the rocks, she stopped — up there towards the beach, just past that “Y” in the path. I studied her intently as she looked around to see if anyone was watching (guess she didn’t see me), and then pulled a plastic container out of her pack. She checked to make sure it was sealed tightly and then buried it in the sand, under a small rock, right there between those two boulders with yellow paint. After that she snapped a few pictures of the water and walked back to her truck.

I waited until she was gone and went over to investigate, hoping to find some fish or something else worth eating. But it was just a plastic box containing a pen and a little book, and the strangest thing — there was a soft pink block of some sort with a picture of a critter who looked a lot like me carved into it! Hmmmm, humans… they play the strangest games!

Gunfire Ghost

The legend of the Gunfire Ghost started back in the mid 60’s when three boys were going to stay overnight at a lighthouse along Lake Superior. They decided to sleep in the attic of the keeper’s home near the tower. They went out for a couple of hours, and when they came back, laid out their sleeping bags. While the boys were getting ready for bed, they heard creaky footsteps coming up the stairs down below them. One of the boys went to check if someone was there. He went down the attic stairs, then he walked down the hallway. The creaky footsteps stopped.

He walked down to the living room and saw a shadow that looked like a man. Hesitantly, he walked toward it — nope, just a statue that looked like a man. Then he thought of something else! He had forgotten to look in the closet, but upon checking, nothing was there. He checked everywhere, and found nothing. So he went back up to the attic.

They had brought their .22 rifles to do some target practice. They had also brought a lantern for the dark so they wouldn’t get lost in the lighthouse. Cautiously the boys laid these items within reach, turned on the radio and went to sleep. During the night they were awakened by a noise, “Creak! Creak!” The footsteps were back! The boys got up and carefully exited out of the attic. “We’re up and armed!” said one of the boys. They looked everywhere. “BANG!!!” Thunder came as it began to storm. So they got out of the attic and went to the basement to sleep, and be safe in case a tornado came. They didn’t hear any more noises that night and the next day it was bright and sunny.

Clues…

When the boys had been out exploring the shoreline the previous afternoon, they had found a box of treasure. Upon hearing the creaking stairs, they were convinced whomever was in the lighthouse with them was after their treasure. One of the boys bravely slipped out the back entrance and ran out into the storm to hide the treasure.

From the lighthouse he headed westward down the beach, away from the lighthouse. As he approached the last row of old pilings standing in the stormy water, a sudden crack of lightning revealed a sandy pathway heading up from the beach just past a big-headed pine that looked like a low, angry cloud. Walking up this path, just ahead of him, the many trunks of a sprawling birch tree caught the light of the moon and looked like a glowing monster, whose many arms were waiting to grab him and his treasure. Carefully, he skirted around the right side of the tree and walked due south to a pine stump standing at the edge of a sandy bowl-shaped area. Ahhh! This would make a good hiding spot for the treasure, he thought! He took a quick look around to make sure he wasn’t being watched and then crouched down into the middle of the sandy basin and hid his treasure under a pile of rocks.