Team Markwell's GPS Adventures
Non omnes vagi perditi sunt
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August 2003

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD26-BYYX Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.7910° W 088.0881° Date Found: 8/1/2003 1:26 pm Hunters: Kelly Lisle, Illinois - West of Chicago 12.56 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Gladson Interactive A scant 2 miles from my office, this driveby HAD to be reached on the first of August during my lunch hour. Within 5 minutes of getting in my car, I was pulling in to the parking lot of a business in Lisle, Illinois. In the corporate world, there are many such buildings as this in the area: non-descript one-story brick buildings with few windows, a main entry door, and in the back a loading dock. The sign on the door read Gladson and Associates, but gave no indication as to the actual work the office did. The dashpoint was scored (0.83 meters away) while in the parking lot right next to the closest visitor parking position. A quick internet search shows that Gladson and associates are specialists in marketing and store design. More can be found about the company at gladson.com if you can ever get the site to load. 3 August points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD26-BYYN Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 40.1815° W 088.1888° Date Tried: 8/10/2003 12:38 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry Near Effingham, Illinois 101.01 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Illinois Acres for Wildlife A drive through downstate Illinois will be taking us through some dashpoints on the way, and this was the first. It looked as though we might be able to score this one with a short walk, but at the closest point, there were prominent signs of "No Tresspassing" and an interesting sign about Illinois Acres for Wildlife. Apparently, some of the farmers in the area donate land to go undeveloped and be a safe haven for indigenous wildlife. Such was this area, and therefore the point was unreachable. On to the next!

smath #2 by munroe & summer math N 40° 06.954 W 088° 15.501 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 8/10/2003 Hunters: Kelly, Sam, Sherry

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

A nice little find of a park. The wife and kid and me were stopping in Champaign for lunch, and hit a Wendy's nearby. We sat under the shade and the boy loved the tree (and the tree was happy).

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD26-BYVO Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 39.0995° W 088.4746° Date Tried: 8/10/2003 3:22 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry Central Illinois 176.23 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Pal's Upholstry and Goats It looked close to scorable, but alas it was again about 200 meters into a fully-grown cornfield. With shorts and a family waiting anxiously, I decided to take a pass. The interesting point of the dashpoint visit was that across the street was a farmhouse with an advertising sign for Pal's Upholstry, while in the yard were about 5 or 6 goats coverting around teleophone line spindles. Also, on the way in was a sign that "Elk Meat For Sale" was available. 0 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD26-CAFA Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 37.3628° W 087.3910° Date Found: 8/11/2003 10:50 am Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry Kentucky near Madisonville 299.11 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: End of the Runway As we wandered back toward Chicago via Turkey Run State Park, we hit two dashpoints along the way. After meandering through many back streets from US 41, we finally got within striking distance of this point. In the distance were the runways of the airport that we drove past. The point was about 60 meters south of the gravel road we were on, and was centered in a bean field. The photo uploaded to the album shows the runways in the distance. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD26-CACY Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 38.6558° W 087.4734° Date Found: 8/11/2003 2:23 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry Central Indiana 210.24 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Tower Road Again, the streets were not as much of a straight shot as they are in Illinois, but they are aptly named. There's a large radio tower just to the south of the point, and the access is gained through travelling Tower Road. Nothing much to report except more farm fields and the tower in the distance (as evidenced by the uploaded photo). 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Narrows Covered Bridge by GCDFAC N 39° 53.458 W 087° 11.176 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 8/12/2003 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

We were staying in Turkey Run for the night and had planned on finding a few caches in the morning, but circumstances were against us. We ended up trying for this one and aborting, even though I got the GPS to zero out. We just ran out of time. I'll be back!

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD26-BYWY Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.6302° W 088.3780° Date Tried: 8/16/2003 9:15 am Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam West of Chicago, Near Yorkville and Oswego 7.72 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Reservation Road I've been eyeing this spot for a while, being intimately familiar with the area - I have a Geocache less than 1.5 miles from the location. But I was skeptical on its availability as it seems to lie in private property surrounded by cornfields. However, I was driving by on the way to BWOY and I did a reconnaissance on the spot. I'm sure after visiting the spot and looking again at the satellite images that this is private farmland only accessible via permission. I may get there later this month, but for now (in case I don't) I'm logging this as the closest I got (about 800 meters). 0 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD26-BYOW Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.6997° W 089.0292° Date Found: 8/16/2003 10:47 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam Just west of Paw Paw, Illinois (Center of the Northern Region) 41.46 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Genesis of a Windfarm Back on March 1, I scored GD21-BYOJ by driving through the little town of Paw Paw, Illinois (population 850). It seems that the region of Northern Illinois in the middle of the east-west borders seems to draw a lot of accessible dashpoints. This one was no exception, and was just to the west of Paw Paw at their interchange to the I-39 interstate that bisects the northern half of Illinois. At the interchange, if one drives onto the interstate northbound, you will score. The point lies between the entrance ramp and the northbound lanes. I scored within 55 meters easily. Of more interest was that just to the west of the interchange, a windfarm is sprouting up. A conglomerate of various power companies are erecting giant windmills for harnessing windpower. It was a fascinating site to see, and a great lesson for my two sons accompanying me. One windmill is complete, but not in operation, and it appears that at least 7 others are in various stages of construction. These towers are massive - too high for me to acturately judge their height. Here is a link to a press release dated July 11, 2002, by then-Illinois Governor George Ryan.

Haunted Mansion by Spyderuser N 41° 49.257 W 088° 10.238 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 8/21/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Found this one on my lunch hour - looks strangely like my cache The Acorn Doesn’t Fall Far, coincidentally - currently the closest cache at 0.46 miles. Spyderuser has placed a cache in one of my favorite DuPage County Preserves. I had found Warrenville Grove cache on May 13, 2001 with my son Drew, and took some of my favorite pictures of all time there (here's one). There are some other great pictures here. This was a new part of the park for me, but the find was relatively easy. Although, like the Acorn cache, I believe it fell from it's perch, so I replaced it.

Curse your Name you dirty _____!!! by That Rat Spyderuser N 41° 46.660 W 088° 09.759 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 8/22/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

A chance to see if I can match wits with Spyderuser. I went out on my lunchhour and travelled the 2.67 miles to the cache site. The walk was short, and I had about 25-30 minutes for searching. This cache is indeed hidden well, as I searched high and low for the container. At one time I thought I had it figured out, only to be denied. I'll be back when I have more time.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD26-BYTA Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.1978° W 088.7605° State: Illinois Date Found: 8/30/2003 12:07 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam Near Marsellies, IL - central farm country 41.28 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Butterfly Fields Before heading into a month of deprived local dashpoints, I decided to take a drive. I knew I would be hitting this point this weekend, but it wasn't until I received notification that one of my favorite placed caches (Cachiversary 1: Forget-Me-Nots) needed some maintenance that I was sure I'd be going on the Saturday of the holiday weekend. Seems some critters had been gnawing on the ziploc bags. The dashpoint itself was typical Illinois cornfields to the west and bean fields to the east. It lies on a gravel road running straight north-south for as far as the eye can see. It is actually on the land belonging to a farmer whose house is in scoring range of the dashpoint. The house is a little worn, but is quite large. Just to the south of the dashpoint, the maps showed a creek, but upon inspection it was more of a drainage ditch between farmfields, as it was straight east and west at the bridge, and was little more than a depression in the flat landscape. Why Butterfly Fields for a name? As we were on the gravel road taking the pictures, my sons and I were amazed at the number of butterflies. Then when we hit the east-west gravel road going west and were literally swarmed with monarch butterflies. The bright orange wings were amazing. I remembered that the monarchs were on the decline as the southern end of their migratory habitat was being wiped out. Evidently, they're flourishing again, as this stretch of road had literally hundreds. We went on from here to fix the cache, and door-to-door time (with a stop to get my son's glasses adjusted) was just about 6 hours of my day.

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Last Updated:
Tuesday, September 2, 2003 12:15 CDT