2015-07-25 43 -84

Location

In a wood near Carpenter Creek, Sumner, MI, USA.

Participants

Plans

Will try for this one this afternoon. Several approaches seem possible; will try the approach from the east, from the end of Klees Rd, first. Expect to arrive at Klees Rd around 2:45 pm. It will be necessary to cross Carpenter Creek, but it looks like an old tractor road extension of Klees Rd does continue past the creek. I'm therefore hopeful of a gravelly ford rather than steep muddy banks.

Expedition

Well, I really wanted to succeed at this one. It would have been the next-to-last graticule I needed for Minesweeper. It was not to be.

I arrived at the end of Klees Rd around 2:45 as expected, to find the woods-road extension toward the hashpoint blocked by a gate and a No Hunting or Trespassing sign. The sign did have the good grace to say "without permission", but it gave no contact information.

I walked back down Klees Rd to the last house. I could see the occupant working in his back yard, so I petted the friendly dog and walked around and spoke to him. I explained my mission, and he seemed sympathetic, but said "I don't own that land. I just own this five-acre strip that goes up to the woods there." I asked if he did know who owned it. He gave me the landowner's name, and said he owned a 120-acre tract that extended past the gate. He had met the landowner only once, and basically apologized for not being able to give me permission to enter: "If it was my land, I'd say sure, go ahead, but I don't know him well enough to tell you he wouldn't care." I asked him if he knew where the landowner lived, and he named a small town maybe eighteen miles south.

I walked back to the car, and with name and town I was able to look up the landowner's phone number and address. I tried calling but did not get through. So I tried the other approaches I had identified on the map; two had explicit No Trespassing signs and one did not but was obviously not a reasonable public approach.

At this point it was about 4 pm. Since home was southwest, and the landowner lived to the south, I thought "what the heck, I'll see if I can find him in person." Google Maps guided me nicely to the address. From the road there was a gravel driveway with a gate that stood open and a sign giving the name of the property and saying "Peace" across the top. Beyond that the driveway disappeared into a stand of young trees. I turned in and followed it maybe 500 m to the very nice but not ostentatious house. There were two dogs in the front yard (one tethered, one loose), a car in the driveway, and clothing drying on the front porch rail. I petted the dogs and rang the bell, but got no answer. I peeked around back - the house has a beautiful view over the adjoining land - but saw no one. I resigned myself to No Trespassing and headed home.

Photos

Closest approach to hashpoint, from the end of Klees Rd to the east. Please note the lovely but verboten woods road headed straight to the hashpoint. Unfortunately I failed to capture a GPS screenshot from here but the distance to the hashpoint is 305 m according to both my memory and Google Maps.
Closest approach from north: proof-shot...
and view to south.
Closest approach from south: proof-shot...
and view to north. There's no sign here but it was obviously private land and inappropriate to go tromping across.
Closest approach from west: proof-shot...
and view to east.