Team Markwell's GPS Adventures
Non omnes vagi perditi sunt
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January 2004

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD31-BYYR Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.7170° W 088.0053° State: Illinois Date Found: 1/1/2004 2:04 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam Inside the Cloverleaf of the Lemont Road Exit, I-55 SW of Chicago 12.65 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: I-55 Exit 271B This one wasn't so much an exercise in exercise, but in the fun of maps. The dashpoint is smack in the middle of a cloverleaf exchange, Exit 271B of I-55, the Lemont Road exit. Now, I do remember that the very first 10 miles of interstate driving I did was with Mr. Ivlow about one month before my 16th birthday. As we approached the onramp of I-55, I asked him what I should do if I'm on a two-lane road traveling at the posted speed limit, and I've got cars backed up behind me anxious to go faster. His response was "I can't officially tell you to speed faster than the posted limit." A very calculated answer. That day we drove from Route 126, the 10 miles to the Lemont Road Exit, precisely where the dashpoint is (now 20 years later). Now to the fun in maps. I had reset my tracklogs at the beginning of the trip. I easily scored the point from the northbound exit, but wanted to sweep around and hit it a second time, reaching 32 meters. But the cool thing is the fact that I could now graph my track logs, and the result is really cool (uploaded in the GD31 photos). It's a graph that clearly shows the four inner circles of the cloverleaf exchange (and the dashpoint in hot pink). Nifty stuff. 3 point for Markwell and Trailblazer, please.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD31-BYUQ Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.6031° W 088.4242° State: Illinois Date Tried: 1/1/2004 2:50 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam South of Yorkville, SW of Chicago 10.43 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: The sheep are STILL in the meadow… Wow. De ja vu! I was actually closer to a previous dashpoint (GD17-BYUJ) that I came close to on Nov 27, 2002, than I got to this current point. I downloaded my tracklogs and ran them through Excel calculations, and found that I reached wtihin 230 meters of GD17-BYUJ, but only 628 meters to this point. As I reported back in Nov 2002, this area is mostly owned by the Sunny Valley Farms, a cattle and feed producer. Just like back 13 months ago, the cows were still roaming the corn stubble grazing on piles of hay. Unfortunately, the dashpoint was more than 600 meters to the north of the East/West road I was on. Farm country + plowed under fields = asking for permission to go onto the ground, just to get my feel a little muddy. Eh, not really worth it. So, I'll take the zero points on this, having scored the other one. 0 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Geo-Golf Course Completed Course: GGAAGD Course Radius: 12.5 Center: 41.7257, -88.1803 Total Strokes: 36 1/1/2004 - 1/23/2004 GeoGolf is an offshoot of Geodashing, which uses randomly generated points. Geo-Golf utilizes a denser course of 18 "holes" randomly generated around at central point of the player's choosing and within a desired radius. The closer you are to the actual spot, the lower your score. This was my third course. I used the same central location as the first two, and kept it at 12.5 km diameter. I seem to be falling into a good pattern with these course of choosing the center, and the radius of about 12km, and taking about a month to complete a full course.

Oh No! - Not another Seed Cache! by Spyderuser N 41° 48.215 W 088° 15.219 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 1/23/2004 Hunters: Kelly

Flyin' Ryan

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

I had been in the area picking up the last Golf Point for my course GGAAGD and I had seen that this cache was in close proximity. Since I had a travel bug that needed to be dropped off, I found adequate parking (although probably not the best, and definitely not the suggested parking) and hoofed it out the very slippery path. Light snow was falling making walking in the middle of the path a real problem, so I just skirted the edge of the path most of the time. I found the container with relative ease, even though the lid really didn't want to give up the booty. It was frozen pretty tight. After a little skirmish with the cache, I finally got a container and dropped off the Flyin' Ryan TB that I've had for way too long. Nice day for a walk in the woods!

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD31-BYYJ Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.2468° W 088.1159° State: Illinois Date Found: 1/31/2004 1:21 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam SE of Wilmington, IL, along the Kankakee River (SW of Chicago) 28.01 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: He Sends the Snow in Winter, the Warmth to Swell the Grain The quote from the title is from “All Good Gifts” from Godspell - but was quite appropriate for the wonderful learning experience my sons had on this trip. Wilmington (my parent's graduating High School) is still primarily an agricultural town. It does boast the Gemini Giant statue from the Route 66 days, as well as the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant (which is being reconverted to prairie land). But today's trip headed south of town on Water Street, which skirts the eastern edge of the Kankakee River. After meandering through the back country roads, I finally found Themla Drive, and the No Outlet sign signifying that this was a road that would terminate near the river (per my topo and sat images). I had also shown that there was a driveway of some type within the magic circle, so I figured that I could pull in, turn around and score in the process. That's exactly what happened. The only big thing of interest at the point was that the driveway stood at the top of pretty steep 20 foot hill. Had I slowed down in climbing the hill, I probably would have slipped right back down. Good sled hill. The real education for my boys came on the way home. I had passed by “Elevator Road” on the way in, but decided to stop on the way out. There were obviously some grain elevators in the area - hence the name - but there was something else that I couldn't immediately identify. They were wooden ovals (about the size of a basketball court) with a plastic tarp over the top. Only when I got closer and hear the roar of the heating engines did I realize that these were grain drying facilities. I took some pics and uploaded one of them. I also saw one that was emptied and had various pieces of construction equipment and farm implements inside the arena. The boys were truly fascinated. The last piece of local interest was found back on Water Street between the dashpoint and Wilmington. There appeared to be four oil refinery storage units. They were obviously not being used and had rusted along the edges. These were probably abandoned when the Mobil Oil Refinery stationed its facilities just south of the Des Plaines River west of I-55 and just to the east of the Army Ammunition Plant. I know it sounds rather a dull trip, but this really was quite the interesting dashpoint when all I expected was to find another point in a farmfield. And to think, I almost passed up on this January dashpoint.

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Last Updated:
Saturday, January 31, 2004 16:45 CST