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

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD36-CAOB Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 40.7577° W 086.9895° State: Indiana Date Found: 6/11/2004 12:15 pm Hunters: Kelly, Carol N of Seafield, IN - Halfway between Chicago and Indianapolis 88.87 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: East of Walcott House (Llama!) Had to drive down to Marion, Indiana for my grandmother's funeral. She was 87 and lived a great life - a very gentle soul. Travelling in the car with my mother, so I decided to take a scenic route as she dislikes interstates. There were two on the way that seemed reasonable: GD36-CAOB and GD36-CASI. Just to the west of the dashpoint is the town of Wolcott, complete with the Wolcott House (pictures to be uploaded). Quite an impressive mansion and bit of history. As we approached CAOB, I realized that the horizontal line on my printed off satellite image was not the road I was on, but a railroad track, and the little road shown on Streets and Trips was a now abandonded driveway. There was a farmer doing some yard maintenance across the street so I pulled over and asked him what was going on with the land across the street. He said that there used to be a house down the road, but that it's been torn down, and that a farmer owned about 150-200 acres of land in the area including that parcel. I asked if he would mind if I drove down the gravel road and back, and he agreed skeptically. I did just that, driving up the road about 150 meters and getting within 44 meters of the dashpoint, and then backing down the road in reverse (no place to turn around). A friendly little tap of the horn and my mom and I were back on US 24 heading east. Finally, after heading back on 24 what should we see but - LLAMAS. Saw three of them in a fenced in yard with sheep. Seemed to be a family of a male, female and young one. Picture uploaded. Dang - there are apparently no llamas in Illinois. I can only find them on dash hunts outside my home state. 3 points for Markwell and Trailablazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD36-CASI Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 40.6848° W 086.1651° State: Indiana Date Found: 6/11/2004 1:46 pm Hunters: Kelly, Carol North of Grissom Air Force Base, near Kokomo, IN 126.15 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Grissom Farm Country and Feeder Grissom Air Force Base (obviously named for the astronaut Gus Grissom) was just to the south of this point. The point was an easy drive-by only about a half mile from our intended route. We pulled up to a farm house, pulled in the driveway, but before we could get out to ask for permission, I looked at the GPS and saw that we scored. Back to the road and no one hurt (We were just turning around). mThe only odd thing was the little fenced in yard across the street. It appeared that there were cows in the field, but there was a miniature silo in the field evidently for feeding the cows (picture uploaded). After hitting the point, my mother and I visited the Grissom Air Force museum for a virtual cache and had a grand time. It seems that many of the barracks are now empty, but the museum has some rich history. 3 points and a virtual cache for Markwell and Trailblazers

Eagles at Rest by JollyBGood N 40° 40.160 W 086° 07.863 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 6/9/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Carol

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

A nice little stop at Grissom Air Force museum. Interesting family history as they had a link trainer, which is what my dad used in the Naval Air at Alemeda, CA. Found the target after about 10 minutes of wandering (click the link above at the dashpoint to see me in front of the target).

Lilly Tomlin as Edith Ann by Evil's Keepers N 40° 41.581 W 086° 07.649 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 6/11/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Carol

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Edith Ann - fond memories of Laugh-In. It was a wet and rainy day, and my mom took the picture from the car, so it's not so close, but it was a fun little side trip on the way home.

Wellwater Yew Dune? #2 by Torry N 40° 54.898 W 086° 31.561 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 6/11/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Carol

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Nice quick find. My mom has been trying to figure out why I'm so into Geocaching. This was the perfect one to have her come and find a box. The trees were spread far enough apart that it wasn't hard to walk - and the terrain was level and easy. Found the cache quickly and were on our way (after depositing the Pluto Bug I picked up a couple weeks ago at the Birds of a Feather event).

Lyons F.P. travel bug station by jonzil N 41° 38.466 W 088° 25.062 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 6/12/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Wags, Jim

Nicholas Kaboord - Go Big or Go Home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

My brother-in-law Jim and I took the boys and Wags on a fun-filled mosquito feeding festival in Lyons Forest Preserve. Actually, we were on a mission to place 20 yellow jeep travel bugs in a local cache, and this was the most promising. It was Jim's first caching experience, and (I hope) he enjoyed it even with the bugs. Up and down hills, and across streams and bridges, and we were there. Wags had an exceptionally good time here, trapsing around off leash on her first REAL hunt. Great time was had by all!

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD36-CAAT Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.9705° W 088.3543° State: Illinois Date Found: 6/12/2004 2:03 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Wags, Jim Randall Road Elgin, IL, NW of Chicago 23.52 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Semper Fi Back in August of 2001, I planned my first cache finding frenzy. It started with a loop up Randall Road, skirting the far western suburbs of Chicago, and heading back south via interstate 294. The very first cache of the day was Semper Fi (GCE5A), and that morning I found it at 5:30 a.m. This point is only 1/3 of a mile from where that cache was. Last night, some heavy rains came through the Chicago area, and we came across a road on our way up that was blocked due to flooding. A slight detour and we were on our way. However, the area of the dashpoint also showed evidence of flooding. On the pictures that I'll be uploading, I believe you can see the sidewalk just to the north of Silver Glen Road submerging below the surface of the water. My brother-in-law was out for his first Geo-Adventures today, and accompanied me and the boys and Wags the Geodog. Since we were able to score from the car and get within 25 meters - that's 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers.

Deer Run by SpongeRob & Family N 42° 01.309 W 088° 23.395 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 6/12/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Wags, Jim

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

This turned out to be more than the boys and the pup could handle. If it was just me and my brother-in-law, we would have easily hiked to the cache without incident, but the day was sunny and hot, and we didn't have water with us. We got to the trailhead and gave up right there to head back to the car. I'll be back!

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD36-CABI Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 43.0459° W 088.2557° State: Wisconsin Date Found: 6/19/2004 2:52 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Ryan the Pilot Waukesha, WI, just off the end of Runway 10 96.94 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Warrior 345: You are clear for landing on runway 10 You all can have your motorcycles and rollerblades and all of the other ways of getting to dashpoints. I'll take a Piper Cherokee any day. I've been waiting for quite a while on one like this. As some of you may know from past conversations, I've got a buddy who's a private pilot and have flown twice with him in the last three years, once with my 8yo son. I saw this point show up just under 100 miles away, and it was too good to be true. It was literally just off the end of Runway 10 at the Waukesha, Wisconsin, airport. We flew out of the DuPage County Airport (DPA: 41.9077778/-88.2486111) at 1:53 CDT and flew a straight northerly path all the way up to Waukesha County Airport (UES: 38.715/-77.181). The trip was about 68 nautical miles and we touched down at 2:36 CDT. When we approached the airport, we were instructed to land on Runway 10 - which is exactly what we were hoping for. We were actually within the magic circle of scoring as we landed. We came in at 97 meters, and (I checked with the track log and the adjusted altimeter) about 98 meters in the air. Cool. But the trip wasn't going to be all this way and have a debate about whether we scored the dashpoint on a touch-and-go. My pilot Ryan, my son Drew and I piled into a very nice courtesy van provided by the airport, and we explained that we were "going to pick something up." We drove out of the airport and over to the N/S road that skirts the airport. The dashpoint is just off of the northbound exit to get onto Interstate 43 east bound in toward Milwaukee. Nothing interesting to report on the point itself. We turned the courtesy van around and went right back to the airport, taking off at 3:25 PM CDT. Pictures have been uploaded, and this dashpoint proves that getting there is DEFINITELY all the fun. 3 airborn points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD36-CAGY Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 42.7277° W 087.8661° State: Wisconsin Date Tried: 6/19/2004 3:42 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Ryan the Pilot Racine, Wisconsin, south of Milwaukee 77.22 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Flyover without knowing it This one is kinda tougher. I'm not going to claim the points, but examination of my tracklogs was quite interesting. I have a calculation that takes the tracklogs and examines the dashpoints and shows me a comparison of all the dashpoints and tracklogs that I come within 2km. Imagine my surprise when our flight path took us over Racine, Wisconsin. I knew we were flying near a dashpoint, but I was much too interested in looking at the scenery of the lakefront and local airports to notice just how close we were at 3:42 CDT: 16 meters! However, at an altitude of 388 meters, there's absolutely no way I can give an accurate description of what was at the dashpoint, so I won't claim the points, even though I was there within the 100 meters. Maps have been uploaded to the photo album. Zero points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Glenwood by Geo Fool N 41° 50.104 W 088° 18.532 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 6/20/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Wags

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

This was a spur-of-the-moment cache hunt, after having been back up to the airport. While the initial part of the hunt on the trail wasn't a problem, once we got to the 50 foot radius, it was obvious that some other group of people had set up camp in the area. I was extremely uncomfortable in the area with me, the two boys and Wags. We did a cursory look for about 3 minutes, and then left.

Arrowhead by Sgt.Schaub N 41° 47.976 W 088° 08.138 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 6/25/2004 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

I never realized this park went so far back. It's a great park, and this little portion of forest in this great park could have been home to a wonderful tradition-sized cache, but Sgt. Schaub decided on a micro-hybrid. While this micro-in-the-woods isn't really a micro (it's too long for a regulation micro at 6 inches), it's also too narrow for a regular sized (the diameter of a film canister). Finding it was no problem. There appears to be a volunteer train opening up the inner trail to this cache location, so I was able to find this wearing business attire on my lunch hour. Time from car door to car door: 3 minutes.

Harris-n-Ford by Uncle Phil & Eric Cartman N 41° 36.781 W 088° 27.116 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 6/26/2004 Hunters: Kelly

Nicholas Kaboord - Go Big or Go Home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

I had a Travel Bug that I wanted to place in a Geocache (as I've had it for a while). We were replacing Cachiversary 1: Forget-Me-Nots with a new container, but he didn't fit. Since we were in Yorkville, my wife said, "Are there any caches around here?" Sure enough… Nice quick easy find without too much trouble, although I did scrape my back a little on the way out. ;-)

Cachiversary 1: Forget-Me-Nots by Markwell N 41° 17.388 W 089° 01.595 Difficulty: Terrain: Cache Maintenance: 6/26/2002 Fixers: Kelly, Sherry, Drew and Sam

big Red M&M Yellow Jeep #3346 (TBH4KD)

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Went back out to replace a cache that someone had put mint flavored tooth-picks in. The racoons destroyed the cache contents. Picked up the Big Red M&M Travel Bug.

Geo-Golf Course Completed Course: GGAAIJ Course Radius: 12.3 Center: 41.7335, -88.1496 Total Strokes: 44 4/29/2004 - 6/28/2004 GeoGolf is an offshoot of Geodashing, which uses randomly generated points. Geo-Golf utilizes a denser course of 18 “holes” - randomly generated points on the earth's surface radiating from a central point of the player's choosing and within a desired radius. The closer you are to the actual spot, the lower your score.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD36-CAAH Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.7481° W 088.4819° State: Illinois Date Tried: 6/29/2004 9:36 am Hunters: Kelly Aurora Aiport 14.99 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: While I Was In the Area - Old Farmers' Adage I was in the area getting ready to talk about Geocaching to some students at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy at the west Aurora campus, so I happened to be in the area, even though I knew that this was going to be unreachable. I decided to improve my "closest dashpoint tries" and went any way. As my recon had told me, this point was a good 545m into a farm field of thigh-high corn. The old farmers' adage says that the corn should be "knee-high by the Fourth of July." No problems here. It seems that there MIGHT have been a possible path in between the property lines that might have gotten me closer, but it wasn't worth it in work clothes and while under time pressure to get to the school. As I went back up the road to Route 30, I stumbled across a private golf club/stable with a gorgeous view (picture uploaded). 0 points for Trailblazers and Markwell

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Last Updated:
June 30, 2004 23:00 CDT