I'm embarrassed to have left something out of the story of buying ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's new car. It's about a stop we made on the way back.
So several years ago someone hid letterboxes at all the highway rest areas they could in Michigan. One was planted at the exit on I-96 West, just outside Lansing. We keep meaning to stop there and not doing so because we're rarely driving into Lansing from that direction during the day. But this time? We were, and we'd figured we might, and brought our letterboxing gear.
Unfortunately the box that had been there went missing a couple years ago. But another person --- someone whose stamp we see in letterboxes all over the place --- planted one at the rest area recently. And we could stop to try finding that.
Back to unfortunately. We're confident we found the spot; it matched a very distinctive tree stump. The sort of place you'd be a fool not to plant a letterbox ... except that it's in a part of the woods behind the rest area that's clearly pretty well-travelled, for woods. We couldn't find the box, and it seems very likely that it was taken, possibly by an animal, plausibly by a person. But we had seen the reports that the letterbox wasn't found the last couple times someone looked for it, so we weren't too surprised by this.
bunnyhugger's inaugural trip in the car, after getting home, was to a 5K run the next day. I didn't join because I wasn't up doing things. (Also I hadn't registered for it anyway.) But our inaugural trip together was the day after that, when we went to her parents'. And we took a diversion before doing that, so we could check on our own letterbox.
This is the one we planted in 2019 at Meridian Baseline State Park. This is the point where the reference line of longitude and the reference line of latitude, used for the surveying of Michigan Territory, come together. Or at least where they were supposed to: the latitude line east of the meridian and the latitude line west of the meridian are a couple hundred feet apart. Still, for the surveying challenge involved that's not doing badly. When they finally opened this as a small state park bunnyhugger carved the most elaborate stamp she's ever made, and we planted it, and we kept not having time to check that it was in good shape and actually being visited and all.
We found it --- bunnyhugger found it --- in quick order, right where we left it and right where our clues said to find it, all quite reassuring. And the box was in good shape, clean and dry inside. With a nice bundle of stamps put in it, including one from the letterboxer who'd put the one in the rest area. We also found a hitchhiker, a miniature letterbox hidden inside ours, and intended to be picked up and brought to another fixed-position letterbox. Turns out, based on its log, it had been in the letterbox a day short of a full year. And, we hope, with our logging that we checked the box and found it in good order, we'll get more letterboxers visiting. (Boxes that haven't been found in a long while tend to be assumed to be lost, fairly or not.)
It's very weird that we didn't do more letterboxing during the pandemic. It's a largely outdoor activity, one that's done while avoiding other people. And it does seem like the number of boxes in and around Lansing have grown, as though the hobby might be on an upswing.
The fireworks are over! Now we leave Cedar Point that 11th of August that would end up being so momentous.
After the fireworks. They left the Gemini parade floats sitting in some empty space near one of ValRavn's drops, although there was a park employee standing nearby in case of too-great mischief.
A look at the 150 Years sign in front of the Midway Carousel.
A look at bunnyhugger photographing the 150 years sign in front of the Midway Carousel.
And a last look at Wicked Twister, still illuminated, off in the distance. Also you can see the Ohio Historical Marker about Cedar Point claiming to be The Queen of American Watering Places. (Brighton, UK, is ``The Queen of Watering Places'' without qualifier.)
A last look at Cedar Point's gates. The sign is right.
Row of ticket booths, all marked Closed. The spread of the lights at the park entrance caught my fancy.
And in about five more hours, my car was destroyed.
Trivia: In 1744 Jesuit missionary Pierre F X de Charlevoix wrote of Algonkian stories of a moose so big ``others were like ants beside it'', for which ``eight feet of snow bothered it not a bit'', possessed of ``a sort of arm growing out of its shoulder'' that ``it used as we use our arms''. His is not the only record of a creature compatible with elephant sightings. Source: Seeing the Elephant: The Ties That Bind Elephants and Humans, Eric Scigliano.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Sundays Supplement 1941: Admiral Popeye, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
