Team Markwell's GPS Adventures
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April 2003

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD22-BYFL Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.6500° W 088.2333° Date Found: 4/1/2003 7:53 am Hunter: Kelly April Fools Dash - only 941.91 meters from home 0.52 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot As everyone on Geodashing found out, Scout gave us all a good April Fools joke by placing one dashpoint close to our homes based on information we gave a couple months ago. Unfortunately, due to rounding of coordinates, my "close-to-home" dashpoint was just under a kilometer away. I was a little worried when looking on the lostoutdoors.com satellite image that this would be in the cornfield and I would need to seek permission. However, this non-random waypoint is truly indicative of the area in which I live. The farmhouse that shows up in the satellite image has been demolished, and the land has been sold off to a developer, who is building the Tuttle Estates subdivision. Such is the way of many of the farms around my hometown (sigh). The roads are all paved and some of the initial houses are going up. This allowed me to stay in my car and still get within 2 meters of the dashpoint. I did zero out (well 0.38 meters) with a slight stroll onto an undeveloped lot. I believe based on the subdivision planning map, that the lot is either lot 31 or 14, most likely 31. Since this is an April Fools Joke dashpoint, I couldn't claim any points, but it was still fun anyway.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD22-BYYT Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.7915° W 087.9323° Date Found: 4/1/2003 1:32 pm Hunters: Kelly Western Suburb of Chicago, in an elite neighborhood 18.44 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: 828 S Grant Street, Hinsdale, Illinois I try as hard as possible to come up with some catchy little name for my dashpoint visits to keep them straight in my own head. I really couldn't for this one. The dashpoint lies just in the southern yard of 828 Grant Street, in Hinsdale, Illinois, about 2 blocks north of Hinsdale Central High School and 1 block SE of the Robbins Park. The house is a large, ornate green with brown trim. I'll be uploading photos later tonight. Interesting how the non-random dash that I did this morning has a more interesting report than the real-life random dash I did this afternoon. The only other interesting thing I could do with this dashpoint is show just how far off the address-to-coordinates systems are. Here's a lostoutdoors.com satellite image of where the various internet mapping solutions think 828 S. Grant Street lies.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD22-BYVY Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.4974° W 088.3106° Date Found: 4/2/2003 9:36 am Hunters: Kelly, Sam SW of Chicago, north of Minooka, IL 10.90 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Jughandle Lane Having hit the closest dashpoint to my work yesterday, and having today off, I decided to take my youngest boy out to score the closest April dashpoint (real one, that is) to my home: BYVY. I was hopeful that I would be able to combine this dashpoint hunt with a caching trip, as there are two forest preserves with in 1.5 miles of the dashpoint with caches in them. I had found GC5C46 last August, but had not yet found GCD06D. Unfortunately, GCD06D is 'temporarily disabled,' so that will have to wait for another trip. After navigating the grid of farmland, the dashpoint was right where I expected it to be: about 40 meters south of a farm country road, west of the N/S road that got me there - Jughandle Lane. The spot was not all that unique as it was farm country with freshly tilled soil ready for planting. To the north, I could see the line of trees that marked the forest preserve holding Lost Kendall Wilderness Cache (GC5C46). However, in retracing my path on Jughandle Lane to get back toward home, I saw that there was a house hidden back through the trees. Apparently, some of the land indicated on the map as Forest Preserve was actually privately owned. The builders of this MASSIVE house had left as many of the mature trees as possible, almost obscuring this 6000+ sq ft home from view.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD22-BYRY Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.9325° W 088.7466° Date Found: 4/5/2003 2:12 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam Downtown DeKalb, Illinois 33.31 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Home of the Huskies DeKalb, Illinois is known for two things: Northern Illinois University and agriculture. The farm culture around DeKalb and the university setting makes is so that DeKalb in known far and wide in the area as the place for seed cord to be developed to its utmost. The entire surrounding area is all farm fields as far as the eye can see, except for the high rises of the collegiate residential housing. The other "story" surrounding this point is that when I was 15 my father took me northwest on Illinois 5 (which has since been converted to Interstate 88). We practiced Interstate driving and pacing a car in front of us for about 45 minutes outbound. Then we turned around at the McDonald's oasis just outside DeKalb, and headed off the main road. My father then pulled me over and said, "Good driving, son. Now how are your navigation skills. No maps, no main roads with signs. No hints from me. Get us back home by using your sense of direction." Little did either my father or I suspect that it would prepare me for one of my adult-life hobbies. Today's dashpoint was square in the middle of downtown DeKalb - nothing spectacular. A little house just north of the intersection of the two main streets that run through town - Illinois 38 (which goes all the way to Chicago) and Illinois 23 (which runs north-south most through most of the northern part of the state. Getting to the corner of Fifth and Pine will put a dasher within the 100m scoring range. Closest I got was where the GPS said 11.26 meters. Of note, I took the backroads home, and stumbled across a Buffalo Ranch at 41.85045, -88.59586 - complete with a grazing herd in the back. Unfortuantely, they were too far away for any clear shot other than blobs on a photo, so I didn't waste the exposure. Although I did get a good shot of the sign.

Rock On! by cruzbike N 41° 53.156 W 088° 40.304 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 4/5/2003 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

My cache log from the page pretty much says it all: April 5, 2003 by Markwell (181 found) Back on July 4, 2001, my wife, two sons and I were up in Rockford visiting two caches (Willow Creek Family Adventure and Rock Cut Cache). We drove back through DeKalb and decided to take some side roads. At the time, we stumbled upon this neat little prairie forest preserve. We decided that we were a little far away from the spot to maintain a cache placed there, and having just brought home our first ticks a week prior, we didn't want to subject ourselves to the then shoulder-high grass. On the way back from DeKalb today from finding a dashpoint, my radar screen popped up a cache near the interstate. Low and behold, it was in the same forest preserve, we had seen almost two years ago. Thanks for the placement. The cache was right where I expected it to be after getting within about 100 feet from the cache. My youngest boy was actually the one to spot it first (he's 3!! ). AND to top it off, he had carried a favorite Shaggy and Scooby toy all the way from the car because he was playing with it. When we opened the cache box, he promptly plopped it into the cache box because he wanted to ""twade." He grabbed the matchbox firetruck in trade and hasn't put it down since. I love it when my kid "Gets It." Great day, although the wind was a little biting for April. Thanks for a very nice cache hunt. Stein auf!! The only thing my log doesn't explain is the "Stein Auf" reference. Our family's favorite Christian Rock Group is Lost and Found, and they tell the story of playing in Germany and having a difficult time with translation. They wanted to say "Rock On!" in German, so they translated it as Rock or Stone (Stein) On (Auf), or Stein Auf. After a while, some of the Germans came up and said, "That doesn't mean what you think it does." "Oh, Really?" "No - it means 'Stone on top of'." They then go on to say that they said that that is what Americans SAY when we think something is cool: Stone On Top Of, Dude! - Stein Auf!!!

Don’t be a Baby! by bspeng N 41° 50.727 W 088° 34.161 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 4/5/2003 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Uh oh! Prairie Fires can sure do an awful lot of damage to caches. Just take a look at what happened to the now-archived Schoolhouse Cache. A prairie fire swept through the preserve, and the only thing that was left of the cache that had been in a PVC tube was the metal wire from the spiral bound log book. When we got to the preserve, we looked at one trail that lead away from the cache, and decided to try to find a more direct route. After about 100 feet from the parking lot, (and 0.31 miles from the cache) we saw a vast expanse of freshly burned prairie grass. It was down to the ground, with the faint smell of smoke still in the air. Not good. We pushed on, trying to find any path through the remaining thorns, but no luck. We decided since we only had tennis shoes on, that we would take a pass on wading through the mud to try to see if the cache survived.

Nothing but black grass as far as the eye can see. The trees survived, but the grass is all gone.

The other side effect is that all the thorns survived without leaves to blunt them. We ran into a mess of thorns!!!

Right before Drew said, "Dad, can we give up?"

Drew wanted to take this picture so that we could get a "size" reference.

Okay, boys - reach as far around the base of the tree as you can.

Walk In Park: Candlewood by jknute N 41° 47.360 W 088° 05.703 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 4/15/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

80°F and a bright sunny day - a new cache only 9 days old, and only 2.35 miles from my office. I was off to find a Geocache on my lunch hour! It was actually kind of interesting: I was having visions of this being on the north side of the forest preserve that the Burlington Creek cache sits it, since it's only 0.36 miles from that cache, but this is in the Candlewood Park from Lisle township. I started off trying to drive in from the north, but only got to within 250 feet by pulling in to someone's driveway (not good). So I backed around and drove around quite a bit before finding the entrance. From there, it was a very quick walk and an intuition based find. The only thing to watch out for was the rusted fence about which many people have logged on the cache page. I nice quick find for my dry-period surrounding out annual northern trip coming up at the end of this month.

Running with the Big Dog by Spyderuser N 41° 53.461 W 088° 11.639 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 4/21/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

This one showed up on my "radar" as I was travelling north to a meeting in Elgin. A nice quick find on the way up. Plenty of parking!

Knotting to It at Lord’s Park by SpongeRob N 42° 02.467 W 088° 15.792 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 4/21/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

I felt VERY uneasy at this cache. As I approached the area for parking, there was a township car there, and some landscapers were dredging the creekbed to level it. The one driving the heavy equipment kept one eye on me the whole time. I got to the area and zeroed out the GPS at a very likely spot, but didn't have any luck. Looked high and low, over and under in every little nook and cranny. Just my own dumb luck I suppose. Must be a really good hide! Evidently, the park had hosted an Easter Egg hunt of sorts, as the WHOLE area surrounding the cache and the path was covered in remnants of egg shells. I did my best to cart some of them out to the garbage, but it was more than my meager hands could handle. I hope the little Easter Egg hunters didn't stumble across the cache container. There were shells right at ground zero for the coordinates.

Vial Stuff #6 by camp637 N 42° 03.769 W 088° 16.291 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 4/21/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

A short little walk to a micro with a code on the bottom. I'm not the most fond of these caches, but this one wasn't done too badly. Still - nothing beats finding that treasure box, even if I don't trade anything.

Spaghetti Cache by SpongeRob & Family N 42° 04.472 W 088° 16.503 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 4/21/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Man - Sponge Rob wasn't underestimating the cleanup necessary for this park. The Spaghetti Cache coupled with Vial Stuff #5 makes a great duo of a hunt. The cache was right where I expected it once I got down below 100 feet. A good find. I then made my vertical way up, and took the higher road to Vial Stuff #5. That has made all the difference!

Vial Stuff #5 by camp637 N 42° 04.272 W 088° 16.457 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 4/21/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

I must have just missed this one. I looked at ground zero for about 20-25 minutes, and saw nothing. However, I had a great walk from Spaghetti Cache, by taking a higher road. Once up top, the walk reminded me of one of my all-time favorite caches: Saw Wee Kee. But, even with 1.5 bags of garbage taken out, I didn't find the cache. It was still a great walk, though!

Greenback Cache #1 by Greenback N 41° 47.969 W 088° 02.970 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 4/28/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Gotta love those lunch-time caches. I was out returning some computers to a local rental place, I popped over to retry this cache that I couldn't find in December of 2002. Today, the satellite gods smiled on me, leading me directly to the cache after a pleasant walk through the prairie. I know why I missed it last time - I was afraid to go to that area due to the worker that was present. No workers today, so no problem.

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Last Updated:
Tuesday, April 29, 2003 16:45 CDT