Team Markwell's GPS Adventures
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September 2003

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD27-BYUZ Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.5279° W 088.4200° State: Illinois Date Tried: 9/1/2003 2:59 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam Far SW suburbs of Chicago, near Plattville, IL 12.66 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Wheel Barrel of Fun It was a drizzle day. This is the kind of rain that makes plants grow, men with glasses periodically stop to wipe them clean, and little boys want to jump in water puddles. But not a heavy enough rain even to make one close all the windows to the house. The temperatures in Chicago have broken to a downright chilly 65°F (18°C), making me and the boys wear jeans on our first dashpoint adventure for the month of September. We knew prior to embarking on our journey that this would be a futile effort. The satellite images and topographical maps indicated that this would be a good 450 meters into the farmfield, and with crops ready for the harvest, farmers are a little particular about letting strangers roam free in their crops. But we traveled as close as possible, getting just to 467 meters while driving on the East-West road of Plattville Road (just west of Plattville) and east of IL-47. The house that owns the property that the dashpoint is on is a horse farmstead with large corrals and a turnstyle apparatus used for walking the horses in circles. On the way back through Plattville, we took a slightly different path, and stumbled across the namesake for this dashpoint (so named by my almost 8yo son). One of the locals had erected a massive windmill, which rotated parallel to the ground. The wind-catchers for this makeshift device were 50 gallon oil barells that had been sliced vertically in half from top to bottom. Words cannot adequately describe this device and its unique appearance, so I've posted a photo to the GD27 album. 0 point for Markwell and Trailblazers, but a great excuse to get out for a drive on Labor Day

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD27-BYUP Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 40.9585° W 088.4938° State: Illinois Date Tried: 9/24/2003 8:13 am Hunters: Kelly Near Odell, Illinois 49.25 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Getting My Kicks Time for my annual business trip to Central Illinois. The first year, In 2001, I hit GD03-0287, GD03-0267 and GD03-0286. Last year, I hit GD15-BYNO, GD15-BYNY and GD15-BYRO. So I set my sites on three dashes this trip as well. Unfortunately, many of the dashpoints (like the others in this area) are quite unreachable as well. Such was the luck of my first dashpoint of the trip: BYUP. I got off of Interstate 55 at Odell, and had a great time driving through the town. This is an old Route 66 town (hence the dashpoint name). As I've mentioned before in past dashes, Route 66 was the Chicago-to-Los Angeles route of the 1920s and 30s that was documented in The Grapes of Wrath. This town has presenrved a tiny portion of that history in restoring a 1932 gas station as a historical landmark, complete with advertising of $0.277 per gallon (compared with today's $1.569 per gallon). Unfortunately, the dashpoint itself lays about 260 meters into a full corn field with ripe stalks waiting for the harvest. The corn rows are laid North/South, and I needed to travel straight West to get to the scoring range. With no one home at the farm house, I didn't want to risk walking into the corn and encountering a combine. So I left this point unreached. Zero points for Markwell and Trailblazers on this one.

Travelin' Man (Southbound 55 only) by Greenback N 40° 50.296 W 088° 40.974 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 9/24/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

So I'm traveling down to Springfield for a business trip - and I've got everything scoped out for cache and dashes along the route. This is a perfect spot for a cache - and a micro. Except for the massive 2 inch thorns on the clump of trees. Ouch. I found the cache anyway and logged it.

Bridge over Some Street by GAAK N 40° 28.752 W 089° 01.703 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 9/24/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

A tougher one. It was very reminiscent of one of the stages of Hard as Pi. I did get my GPS to get to 20 feet at different places, but I couldn't spend the time searching for this cache that I wanted to. It was already getting late, and I really wanted to attempt the I-55 Prairie Oasis Cache. I'll be back through again - and I hope this is here at the time.

I-55 Prarie Oasis Rest Area Bug Hotel by Eric K N 40° 21.532 W 089° 06.700 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 9/24/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

When I go caching on a trip, these rest stop caches have been rather disappointing. Not so on this one. There was a real wooded area and trail. How cool!!! Unfortunately, the satellite gods were not generous today, as I had no less than 7 ground zero points, some of which were a full 100 feet from some of the other zeroed coordinates. I'll be passing through this way again, and will definitely attempt this one. I'm reasonably sure the cache is still there, and if I had more time, I would have found it.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD27-BYIT Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 40.0898° W 089.5344° State: Illinois Date Tried: 9/24/2003 11:20 am Hunters: Kelly North of Springfield, Illinois 127.15 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Grasshoppers in the Grill As I continued my journey down Interstate 55 to Springfield, I saw BYIT blip on my GPS radar screen as only five miles from the interstate. Why hadn't I printed off the info for this one? I detoured off the road and had to alternate between straight north-south roads and straight east-west roads as I stairstepped my way through the open farmland on gravel. The is central Illinois driving. There was one point that a large harvester was so close to the road that the dust of the harvesting corn covered my dark blue car in a yellow haze. When I approached the dashpoint, I remembered why I didn't print the information for this point. I considered it unreachable in the time frame of continuing to my business meeting. It would have been a 500 meter walk into farm fields if I could get permission. Since it was 11:20 and the meeting started in Sprinfield at 12:00, I could tarry no longer, and decided to talk the loss on points. I had gotten out of the car to take the reading of the closest drivable distance when I noticed that when I drove so close to that last harvester and covered the car in corn dust, I also must have plowed through the swarm of grasshoppers stirred by the massive vehicle. My entire front grill of the car was caked with dead grasshoppers - some as large as my thumb. Ah well. Zero Points for Markwell and Trailblazers.

ANTE UP! by Rod and Shelby N 39° 45.006 W 089° 38.924 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 9/26/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

What a nice park. What a nice grove of trees. That MUST be the place where the cache is hidden. What cool old trees. Lots of nooks and crannies to search for a micro cache. Twenty-five minutes later, and I'm still searching. The ducks are now laughing at me. I will not be successful on this one today.

Wolf Creek Cache by bensdadd N 39° 57.010 W 089° 31.682 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 9/26/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

There was another log for September 23 that mentioned the smell. Whew! But it was still a great cache to find. Cool camo job on a PVC pip, and an ingenious non-traditional hiding method. Quite the enjoyable cache. I did mention on my Geocaching.com log that I spent a good five mintues trying to unscrew the pull-off lid.

Williamsville Cache by Fulleclipse N 39° 57.165 W 089° 31.664 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 9/26/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

If any of you reading this have found Beverly, you'll recognize the terrain - a great little preserve with a lake, that yields a pine forest where the cache is hidden. Nifty stuff. I coupled this find with the Wolf Creek cache and would highly recommend that anyone searching for this do the same.

Benchmark on a Long Bridge over the Macinaw River? by SYamato N 40° 32.744 W 089° 21.542 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 9/26/2003 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

This one showed up on the radar screen. I decided to try it out. I knew that it was a micro and that it involved finding a benchmark as well - but that was about it. I had no luck with this one today, and time ran out before I could find the cache. Such is life. I hope to be back to find this one.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD27-BYNI Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 40.5924° W 089.2787° State: Illinois Date Found: 9/26/2003 3:38 pm Hunters: Kelly Near Goodfield, Central Illinois 90.85 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Pumpkin Harvest and Stucky's This is it - my last try for a scorable dashpoint. I knew that Gazza had hit this point prior, and that it would only bring 2 points to the team, but it was this or not actually scoring ANY points in September - a record I couldn't have. Gazza's description fit perfectly - down to the silt covered area in the cornfield where I clicked the GPS and read 96.57 meters from the point. The major difference is that I had come from Route 9 to the south to reach this point, as I was on my way back from my Springfield business meeting. On the way through Delavan (the town where I had my first music teaching job) I came across a field of pumpkins in the midst of harvest. They had already been sliced from the vines and were waiting in neat little rows to be picked up by the workers and placed onto trucks. Quite a site - and Morton, Illinois, is supposedly the “Pumpkin Capital of the World” if you can believe road signs. The last interesting tidbit was that the trek back to the interstate through Goodfield actually took me past GD03-0286, the 6th point I tried in Geodashing. There's a picture of the abandoned Stucky's in the photo album under Game 3. If I'm correct, that's 2 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

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Last Updated:
Saturday, September 27, 2003 17:00 CDT