2017-01-01 42 -78

Location

In the woods of the East Otto State Forest

Participants

Pedalpusher
Simon the dog
Myka the dog

Plans

Yesterday's hash should be successful so this should also be part of a Consecutive hash. There will be bush-whacking involved I'm sure, but barring unexpected swamps or snow storms, I should be able to reach this. If there is snow, I may not be able to find parking where I'll just give up on that. I really don't want to get stuck in a ditch in the middle of no-where. This hash is close to my 100th expedition and even closer to where we walked in the State forest afterwords, but that time we stuck to the forest road and didn't make it close to today's hash, so the Déjà vu is out. If I do have a large consecutive streak built up after this, I may try to continue it in the Dunkirk Graticule tomorrow, but as of right now, I'm not planning on going since it's so far away.

Expedition

Driving to the forest after lunch, we ran into some problems. First, I realized halfway down the 219 that I had forgotten my gators and I knew I needed protection from the deeper snow getting in my boots. I thought I might be able to improvise something out of some bags I had in the car when I got there though. Next, by East Otto, I got confused at one intersection and made a wrong turn heading South when I should have turned North. When I hit Mansfield, I knew something was wrong and I pulled out my map. Figuring out what I did and where I was, I was able to navigate back to where I wanted to be.

Turning down Traffic St, I was happy to see the front part plowed. This is a Limited Maintained Road so they only plow to people's driveways that live on the road. Fortunately, that was just past where I wanted to park anyway. I parked on the road right by the piles of snow the plows left in the middle of the road. Walking down the road a bit further, I could see brave people had still driven down the road leaving wheel tracks to walk in. Finding the old logging path or ATV trail I saw on the satellite pictures, we headed into the forest. It was a nice, easy walk, and my improvised gators were working, although they did collect a little snow inside them. Halfway to the hash, I tried fixing them as my heel was slowly pulling the bags into my shoes. I untucked my pants from the bags and just left them over my legs.

Getting within a tenth of a mile from the hash, I saw a barrier on the path I was on in the form of Posted Signs, A LOT of Posted Signs. On the google maps, the hash appeared just outside of the State Forest, but I've seen those boundaries to be not very accurate. Unfortunately in this case it appears they are. Still over 400 feet from the hash, I decided to walk into the woods and see how close I could actually get to the hash. There was also a chance that this person's property ended before the hash and the next guy was a little more lenient on hikers and hunters. Crossing a stream and getting closer, I headed down a small ridge only to find more posted signs about 20 yards/meters apart. This guy really didn't want anyone on his property.

Getting the pictures, we headed back to the road but by this time, my heels had eaten all of the plastic bag so they weren't doing much at this point. My boots were keeping the snow out at least so it was just my ankles that were a little cold until we hit the road. We walked down a bit further to get the dogs a little extra running time before heading back home. One more for the Posted achievement and since this wasn't reachable, I'm not going to drive the hour plus tomorrow to maybe find another posted field. There is a street-view that doesn't show any posted signs but it's really old and from 2008 so lots of things can change.

Photos

We parked at the end of the road where they stopped plowing. The dogs are very excited to get out and run around.
My improvised gators. Let's see how these work out.
Walking down the trail wasn't too bad. Simon is enjoying bounding everywhere.
Uh-oh, the trail is posted to the left...
...and to the right. Practically a fence of Posted signs.
Let's head off the trail toward the hash and see how close we get...
...unfortunately, it's still heavily posted.
Back at the car, the end result of my improvisation. They worked for a bit, but I would have had to remove my boots to keep adjusting them.