Team Markwell's GPS Adventures
Non omnes vagi perditi sunt
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July 2002

Elk! Eeek!

Scooby and Shaggy enjoying their favorite TV Show

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD13-CAAT Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.2854° W 087.8401° Date Found: 7/5/2002 Hunters: Kelly South of Chicago on I-57 Frontage Road, Near Monee, IL 31.89 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Frontage Road Dash Found this one as a driveby on a frontage road to I-57, 60m from the frontage road, in someone's backyard. ATV in the garage. The corn is indeed "knee high by the Fourth of July." Not much else to report.

Racoon Grove Cache by Lieutenant Dave N 41° 23.693 W 087° 45.142 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/5/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam

Kimi

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

We found this one after hitting the dashpoint just south of the cache. Racoon Grove is indeed one of those great little Will County Forest Preserves - well hidden and nobody there. We did take the opportunity to look at poison ivy and identify it. Found the cache and placed Kimi on her way.

Very Cool Caching Tree But not where the cache is...

On Rollon Ma Boule by TourEZ N 41° 32.006 W 087° 59.506 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/5/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

I love it when a cache has history! That's exactly what this cache is - history at its best. A great little hike into the woods with my boys and the oldest is now really starting to get into Geocaching. “Dad, can I be the one to get the container out of the hiding spot?” Very cool. Nice easy find, not too bad of weather. Great day of caching and dashing on a Friday off of work.

History Rock

Putt Putt Geocaching by bspeng N 41° 43.215 W 088° 07.826 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 7/6/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Now it's embarrassing. I'm heading over to EAST MEETS WEST or you can’t get there from here and I say to myself: “OK - some other people have found it, so it must be replaced. I'll just go and find it on the way.” WRONG - DENIED. OK - it's gone. Nope. Someone else found it that day. {sigh}

I am the Guardian of Forever

EAST MEETS WEST or you can’t get there from here. by Eagle Son N 41° 42.246 W 088° 08.870 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/6/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Great Cache, and quite a poser. I started off with my son and found the proper entrance for the first leg. We hiked there and were stumped to find the posted numbers - almost gave up. Took one last look around and found it - not where I expected it at all. On to stage two. Not having the benefit of LostOutdoors.com in the field, and still using my Etrex, I had to rely on gut instinct. I drove out to Boughton road and approached this from the south (a mistake). I ended up in a little park of land behind Hidden Valley drive. I eventually even found a path to the river's edge on the South Side of the DuPage River. Luckily, someone was on the other bank and I asked them where they started to get there: Knoch Knolls Park {arrrggghh!!!}. Back to the car, drive to the spot - parking to cache 0.75 miles. 2.5 terrain??? Oh well. I was sure my son would be so pooped he wouldn't want to continue, but he was up for it. We found the cache after walking almost straight there, but that meant 0.25 miles for the first leg, parking to marker (round trip 0.50 miles), 0.25 walking behind Hidden Valley Drive (round trip 0.50 miles) and 0.75 miles to final cache (round trip 1.5 miles)... Total Walking: 3.5 miles. And my son didn't complain a single step of the way! Cool day to be a dad.

Very cool giant of a tree near the cache, if you come the right way.

Trackside by SpyderUser N 41° 41.954 W 088° 14.051 Difficulty: Terrain: Dates Tried: 7/10/2002 7/11/2002, 7/12/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

The closest cache to my home placed by someone else other than me, and I can't find the stupid thing! The first day it was posted, I went home on Normantown Road. I spotted other cachers (Cache Hunters and Greenback) looking in the right area, but they had no luck. On 7/11, I went back on my way to work, but didn't use updated coordinates. On the way home from work, I used the updated coordinates. Still no luck. On 7/12, I went back on my way to work, this time wandering to the backside of the fenced area. On the way home from caching, I went back again, this time looking at the gate to see if it was open. Still no luck. Other cachers have verified that it is indeed there, so unless this is some giant hoax, I'm stumped. And Frustrated.

Fairways by ChicagoGeoTracker N 41° 45.872 W 088° 04.711 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 7/12/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Went to the park as the first of three tries for today (one being a failed attempt at Trackside listed above). We found the park and the general area that the cache should have been in, but my etrex (still using it) was bouncing around like mad. Eventually gave up for today. I can hit this one better on a lunch hour without the boys.

Park Ridge Trail by SpyderUser N 41° 45.037 W 088° 13.974 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/12/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Well this is sandals if you come in from the right direction. We did not. We drove through the subdivision and couldn't find an easy inlet to the trail. We got all the way to McCoy and saw the park between Frontenac and the train, but couldn't get there. I misinterpreted Bspeng's warning to mean that I SHOULD come from the west. So we went under the viaduct and took the first street toward the cache. I found the bike trail in the Waubonsee Creek park and saw the bridge. It was only 0.47 miles to the cache. Cool. We crossed the bridge and wandered the wide open fields behind people's houses. Then we crossed the field of wildflowers Bspeng mentioned and stopped short at the train tracks. I wasn't going to take my two boys across the tracks. We went back heading north first seeing if there was another place to cross the stream. We came across some neat stairs and a little waterfall that made crossing quite nice - that's the picture I'll be uploading (not the attached map). Unforutnately, the far side was shoulder high grass and that's where my son picked up two ticks before we hit the trail again. I did have an encounter with the Park District official, which was extremely cordial. Seemed like a great guy. I pulled out the satellite shot and he let me know where to park. I ended up parking only 250-300 feet from the cache! My coords were off by about 50 feet, but I spotted exactly where it would be hiding. Spoiler photograph below is a of the map of the adventure.

Spolier Map

Wildflowers mentioned by Bspeng

Watery Steps we used to cross the creek on the way back.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD13-BYYD Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.6589° W 088.2437° Date Found: 7/13/2002 Hunters: Kelly and Drew 35 miles SW of Chicago 1.32 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: The corn was as high as an elephant's eye The closest dashpoint ever to my house, I knew this area well. It's the back farmland of one A.J. Loeffel, the local county tax assessor. A.J. is a farmer by trade, and has lived on this farmland since taking over his father's land. The Loeffel Farm was established in 1929. A.J. had a local reputation sprouted by my wife's subdivision. The story went that if you went "parking" in the area that A.J. just might show up at your car door with a shotgun to scare you off. He also had a reputation of having the meanest dogs around, as they would roam his farmland free and attack any bike rider happening near the path. I'm happy to say that nothing could be farther from the truth. I introduced myself to him (my mom used to deliver his mail years ago), and explained my intentions the best I could - showing him a satellite photo with the dashpoint and the points 100m N/S/E&W. “But what's out there?” “Nothing except your corn.” “Why do you want to go out there again?” “To tell other people what's out there.” “But there's nothing out there!” He finally gave me explicit instructions of walking out the E/W lane in between the beans until I get to the corn, then turn right. I should go to the edge of the property along the N/S rows of corn (not crossing the rows), and at the far south end of the corn fields, the rows turn E/W. I'd be able to take one of the E/W rows east directly to the dashpoint. I did, and propped my son on top of my shoulders. From there, he could see above the corn in all directions to take the pictures. We were about 86 meters from the dashpoint. I was hoping to see A.J. often present donkey that he keeps in his front field adjacent to his house. A more proper name for the dashpoing could have been "Pardon my Ass" but the donkey was uncooperative and in hiding today. BTW - his dogs are very sweet, too! Three points for Team Trailblazers and Markwell

Greenback e-mailed me and said, "I really like the idea of the Photographer's Cache. The one in Iowa: is it worth it to drive there?" In a word, NO, it wasn't. Other people had set up local versions of the Photographer's Caches, why not a local one for Chicago? I set it up fairly quickly, but hemmed and hawed about the boundaries. The original boundaries were Wisconsin and Indiana (those were easy), and I-80 to the south and 47 to the west. Bob Wilson complained about I-80 and Bspeng half-heartedly kidded me about 47 to the west. CachewNut complained about anything more than 25 miles from State and Madison. So I compromised and found something that has made people quitely happy: using county borders: Cook, Lake, Will, Kendall, DuPage and Kane counties. First placement of the cache was something peculiarly Chicago. As Jake and Elwood said in the Blues Brothers... Elwood: Well this is definitely Lower Wacker drive. If my estimations are correct, we should be very close to the honourable Richard J. Daly plaza. Jake: That's were they got that Picasso. Elwood: Yep. Actual Picture taken by TeamAngiEric on 7/25/2002

Trackside by SpyderUser N 41° 41.954 W 088° 14.051 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 7/21/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Tried it again with the Mrs. She couldn't find it either. If it weren't for all the cachers insisting it was there, I'd feel like this is a conspiracy.

Birdwathcher by SpyderUser N 41° 43.144 W 088° 14.134 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/23/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Found this one on my way home from work. I have intimate knowledge of these birds, from the inside. While my office was resurfacing their parking lot, we used this bird extensively. I just wish the human component of this bird were a little quieter. Ours was very talkative.

Trackside by SpyderUser N 41° 41.954 W 088° 14.051 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/25/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew and Sam

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

He has shown me pity. Spyderuser took pity on me and sent me detailed photos of the cache's location. My problem was that I was so wrapped up in the knoweldge of “My GPS says I'm 3 feet from the cache,” that I didn't think like a cacher. Hmmm... a fictional conversation comes to mind... BEN: I suggest you try it again, Luke. Ben places a large helmet on Luke's head which covers his eyes. This time, let go your conscious self and act on instinct. LUKE: (laughing) With the blast shield down, I can't even see. How am I supposed to fight? BEN: Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them. Han skeptically shakes his head as Ben throws the seeker into the air. The ball shoots straight up in the air, then drops like a rock. Luke swings the lightsaber around blindly missing the seeker, which fires off a laserbolt which hits Luke square on the seat of the pants. He lets out a painful yell and attempts to hit the seeker. Stretch out with your feelings. Luke stands in one place, seemingly frozen. The seeker makes a dive at Luke and, incredibly, he managed to deflect the bolt. The ball ceases fire and moves back to its original position. You see, you can do it. But by far the coolest part of this cache was one of the trade trinkets in the box. A while ago, I visited a cache and rummaged through the trunk of my car looking for anything to trade. I found a tie I hadn't worn in a good 2 years, and placed it in the cache. This was 3 months ago. The same Wiley Coyote tie was in this cache. Bad tie karma.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD13-BYUH Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.9807° W 088.5740° Date Found: 7/27/2002 15:35 AHunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam Northwest of Chicago, near DeKalb, IL 29.31 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Fast Cars, Beans and a Common House Up Route 47 (a common path for dashpoints for me) lies the little town of Elburn. Just northwest of Elburn is an even smaller village of Burlington. Care to divide it smaller? How about South Burlington? Along Ramm Road in this general vicinity is the Sycamore Speedway, a considerably smaller racecourse in comparison to the one I drove by in April on GD10-CAAG (message 3345). But the more intriguing aspect of this driveby bean-field dashpoint (99.84 meters while on the shoulder) was the large building and cemetery less than 250 meters from the dashpoint. At one time, it must have been a one-room church - perfectly rectangular, with windows on all sides. On the front was emblazened "So. Burlington Common House" and it now appears to be a community meeting room of some sorts. Behind the building is an extremely old cemetery, having death dates going back to the early 1800s. I know that's not much for the Europeans, but around here when this area wasn't even a state until 1818, it's kinda neat to find this stuff. No out of the ordinary wildlife, but a definite score on this driveby.

Cachin’ for Critters by Dad and the Dynamic Duo N 41° 53.846 W 088° 29.282 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 7/27/2002 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Continuing the theme... YODA: A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack. LUKE: But tell me why I can't... YODA: (interrupting) No, no, there is no why. Nothing more will I teach you today. Clear your mind of questions. Mmm. Mmmmmm. Artoo beeps in the distance as Luke lets Yoda down to the ground. Breathing heavily, he takes his shirt from a nearby tree branch and pulls it on. He turns to see a huge, dead, black tree, its base surrounded by a few feet of water. Giant, twisted roots form a dark and sinister cave on one side. Luke stares at the tree, trembling. LUKE: There's something not right here. Yoda sits on a large root, poking his Gimer Stick into the dirt. I feel cold, death. YODA: That place...is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go. LUKE: What's in there? YODA: Only what you take with you. Luke looks warily between the tree and Yoda. He starts to strap on his weapon belt. Your weapons...you will not need them. Luke failed that test, as did I.

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Last Updated:
Friday, July 26, 2002 16:00 CDT