Team Markwell's GPS Adventures
Non omnes vagi perditi sunt
In chronological order

Back Home

July 2004

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-CAGI Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.7663° W 087.6428° State: Illinois Date Found: 7/5/2004 10:11 am Hunters: Kelly, Wags Urban Chicago, Where I-94 and I-57 split 31.44 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Leaping from Rooftop to Rooftop Geodashing Yahoo Message 316: Markwell wrote: I think I have the award for the most boring two dashpoints for Game 2. Scout wrote: Be patient. I'm waiting for a dashpoint to land somewhere in the Chicago loop and hearing your adventures of trying to get a satellite fix long enough to pinpoint its location. I can just picture you leaping from rooftop to rooftop trying to keep a clear view of the sky. That was written August 25, 2001. Today's first of five dashes fulfilled that prophecy. CAGI lies in the heart of Chicago where I-57 starts as a spin-off of I-90/94. The area is known as Englewood, and is in no way one of the best neighborhoods in the City of Chicago. Being there on July 5 at 10am wasn't so bad though, and the dashpoint was an easy drive-by just north of 71st Avenue on Emerald. The housing was pretty nice, actually, and there was an Elementary School in the area (William A. Hinton Elementary). 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-CAFA Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.5669° W 087.7271° State: Illinois Date Found: 7/5/2004 10:34 am Hunters: Kelly, Wags Near the Junctions of I-80 and I-57, Country Club Hills, IL 26.48 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Tweeter and Willow Another Interstate Junction, this time I-80 and I-57. Country Club Hills is a wonderful little community enfused with the commerce that the Tweeter Center brings (next concert is tomorrow night: Jessica Simpson). The dashpoint lies just to the southeast of the intersection of the two interstates, but is accessible from the neighborhood. The point is in the drive-way of a brown ranch house with a giant willow tree in the front yard (picture uploaded). 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-BYKU Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.1040° W 089.5932° State: Illinois Date Found: 7/5/2004 12:53 pm Hunters: Kelly, Wags Saratoga Center - northwestern Illinois 79.92 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Beans and Tassled Corn This was the farthest drive between dashpoints for the day. The drive from CAFA to here was a little more than 100 miles. This is also the metaphorical farthest point from the first one of the day (CAGI). While CAGI was urban with a capital UR, this is about as rural as you can get. I'm still waiting for my Mapsource disk to arrive, so I've been using the basemaps in my GPS76S since April of 2002. Normally, while I'm driving the interstates, I have the resolution set to 2 miles. That way I can see any major roads or towns within a decent radius. While I approached this point, I had the resolution set to 5 miles. The only things on my map screen were me (the dark triangle), the bearing line and the target dashpoint. Once I crossed the Illinois River in the town of Henry, there was NOTHING out here but corn, beans and worms. Wags and I stopped at the magic circle line and got out to stretch our legs, lowering our score a smidge by walking up to the edge of the bean field to the west. To the east was tassled corn (must be sweet corn), and I've uploaded pictures of looking up the road north and south (yawn). Interesting. The map says this is Saratoga Center. I can't see ANYTHING that looks like the center of ANYTHING here. 3 more points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Big Red by Blazer2 N 41° 25.040 W 089° 28.585 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/5/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Wags

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Caches that have coolness. Not a cache that is placed just because you can. Caches that bring people to neat out-of-the-way places that no one knows about. That's what I love about caching. That's what this is. Cool Bridge, cool park, nice easy hide.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-BYOF Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.6231° W 089.4194° State: Illinois Date Found: 7/5/2004 2:13 pm Hunters: Kelly, Wags Northwest of Mendota, Illinois, Near Maytown Pheasant Preserve 61.47 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Maytown Cache and Dash From GD37-BYKU, I took a road straight north to Wyanet (a town I visited last dashing all the way back in September of 2001 for GD03-0287. I actually drove by the spot (and remembered the bridge I crossed) on the way through town. The dashpoint for this one however, took me through Princeton - and past a very neat cache called Big Red (GCFD50). But the point was pretty non-descript. The only really interesting thing about this farm country was the fact that near the actual dashpoint about 50 meters east of the road, cows were taking a mid-day bath (picture uploaded). Also near the dashpoint was the State-Park-owned Pheasant Wildlife Preserve called Maytown Wildlife Preserve. There's a cache in there, but I couldn't get to it due to bad parking. Although, had it not been for this dashpoint, I wouldn't have even KNOWN about the cache. Cool. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Maytown Habitat Area by Blazer2 N 41° 37.197 W 089° 23.675 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 7/5/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Wags

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Bummer. This was a nice little out of the way IDNR plot of land, and would have been wonderful for Wags to romp around in, but the parking being roped off scared me away. See picture below. Maybe I'll come back some day.

Kakusha by Smith N 41° 33.786 W 089° 08.332 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 7/5/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Wags

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Another disappointment. That makes 1/3 for caches for the day (5/5 of dashes though). The area was wonderful - nice trails, a decent hike. I was even able to wave at a boater while searching for the cache, but I turned up empty handed. Wags loved every minute of this cache. Bounding over the thigh-high grass was just what she needed to burn off some steam.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-BYYL Terra Server Picture from LostOutdoors.com Coordinates: N 41.5891° W 088.3782° State: Illinois Date Found: 7/5/2004 4:24 pm Hunters: Kelly, Wags Farm Country near Yorkville, Illinois - SW of Chicago 8.54 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: The End of Wheeler Road After driving for about 12 miles on a straight E-W gravel road, I finally found the two main roads that would take me back home: US 52, which travels southeast from the dashpoint area into Mendota, and then US 34, which travels from Mendota through many little railroad towns and eventually passes through Yorkville. Yorkville is close enough to home that this is where my optometrist is located, and we had just been in the area recently to pick up my new prescription for glasses (my eyesight got better?). We had mused about the dashpoint back a couple of days ago, but I held off on it until today. Wheeler Road heads from Plainfield (my town) to the east all the way to the west and ends just shy of Yorkville. Where Wheeler Road ends in the middle of the farm country is just outside of the magic circle of scoring for this dashpoint. However, I was able to drive a little to the south and easily get to 68 meters and thus score. Pictures of the little electrical warning sign and marker, as well as pictures of my co-pilot for the day have been uploaded. All told, today was about 7½ hours of dashpoint hunting, and I had a BLAST! 3 final points for the day for Markwell and Trailblazers

Flat as Can Be by ChicagoGeoTracker N 41° 45.837 W 088° 05.028 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 7/16/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

OK - I was just going on coordinates, and didn't see the name or the description on the cache page. I guess I just missed this one - for now...

A Liquid Super Hero’s Foreign Coin by C*A*C*H*E N 41° 46.047 W 088° 46.661 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/17/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Hmmmm... Aquaman? Prince Namor? Centavos? Atlantian? Still can't figure out the name of the cache, but the hiding style was so typical that I spotted the location from about 100 feet out. Quick, easy find.

The Phoenix by Markwell N 41° 45.379 W 088° 51.378 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Maintained: 7/17/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Sherry, Drew, Sam, Eric, Marty, Kurt, Hunter, Mallory, Skyler

Yellow Jeep 4x4 #3833

Friend Care Bear

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

A nice littel excursion while BSA Pack 13 was camping at the local State Park. Since this was just a maintenance check for me, I let the other adults hold the GPS while the kids scurried around the area. Everyone signed the logbook and we traded out Travel Bugs

PopCorners by Spyderuser N 41° 42.300 W 088° 26.760 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/18/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry

Friend Care Bear

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Great little find. I love old trees and there's four or five fabulous ancient birch trees at this location. Found the cache after about 10 minutes of looking at all the trees.

Geo-Golf Course Completed Course: GGAAJH Course Radius: 12.4 Center: 41.7335, -88.1496 Total Strokes: 41 6/29/2004 - 7/24/2004 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. This was another course with the widest radius (12.4 km) and centered on my "choosy" location - one that I hand picked on the map so as to have the least interferance. It was OK - but I think I'll go back to the original starting location next round.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-CAID Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 40.8392° W 087.4046° State: Indiana Date Found: 7/25/2004 8:44 am Hunters: Kelly, Ryan the Pilot Just across the Indiana Border, SW of Brook, Indiana 70.16 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Adventures in Aero-Dashing: Part 1 Altitude: 145 feet (44m) 3-Dimensional Distance: 72 m The first point we swooped down to was interesting in that we were following the fork of two branches of a river, trying to determine exactly where this point was going to lie. The point actually snuck up on us, and the first pass we were still showing an altitude of about 1300 feet - with a ground altitude of 650 according to the topo map I printed - making our elevation at approximately 650, and not within the scoring range. So we circled around to the south and came back at the bean field again going south to north. This time, we were MUCH lower - an altitude of 795 feet, making that actual elevation of 145 feet. As for the description, there's a great little meandering river to the north of the point, and just to the northeast is a nice little bridge that spans the creek. First score of the day with Aero-Dashing! 3 points for Markwell (and Ryan) and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-CABO Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 40.6966° W 087.8991° State: Illinois Date Found: 7/25/2004 9:00 am Hunters: Kelly, Ryan the Pilot Country Road Instersection, NNE of Champaign, IL 67.62 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Adventures in Aero-Dashing: Part 2 Altitude: 193 feet (58m) 3-Dimensional Distance: 99 m The second point we swooped down to was much easier to target in our “gunsites” as the magic circle was over an intersection of county roads. When we first approached the point, we spotted a radio tower to the southwest, but it was far enough away that it didn't pose a flying hazard. The farm house is on the NE corner of the intersection of the road, surrounded by bean fields, but this particular field looks like it hasn't been plowed for many years. Second score of the day with Aero-Dashing! 3 points for Markwell (and Ryan) and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-CAAR Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 40.2378° W 088.0259° State: Illinois Date Found: 7/25/2004 9:16 am Hunters: Kelly, Ryan the Pilot East of Rantoul, IL 97.68 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Adventures in Aero-Dashing: Part 3 Altitude: 266 feet (81m) 3-Dimensional Distance: 88 m This one we actually swooped 3 times to make sure. The first time we came in at about 400 feet, and flew right over the point, but at 400 feet I couldn't claim scoring, we swooped again, but this time swerved to the south of the point - within th 300 foot elevation, but not within the 300 foot distance from the point. Third time was indeeed a charm, as we got within 11 meters of the point, and had the altitude of 266 feet (81 m). The point itself was nothing much more than open green farm field, fairly close to the intersection of a road that had come south from Gifford, IL and turned west to Thomasboro. According to Ryan the Pilots air charts, there was supposed to be a private airstrip in the area, but unless the little green patch of grass we saw was it, we missed it. The point actually had a little bit lighter area of growth - light chartreuse instead of the dark green. My guess is that the beans growing there were slightly flooded at the beginning of the season, making them more tender and less far along in the growth cycle. Just to the east of the point was an irrigation ditch running along side the road. Third score of the day with Aero-Dashing! 3 points for Markwell (and Ryan) and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-BYYJ Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 40.0258° W 088.4593° State: Illinois Date Found: 7/25/2004 9:30 am Hunters: Kelly, Ryan the Pilot SW of Champaign, IL 112.39 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Adventures in Aero-Dashing: Part 4 Altitude: 117 feet (35m) 3-Dimensional Distance: 91 m Again, this point was near an intersection of a road, making the targeting pretty easy. The point was just to the west of a north-south road edging the counties of Champaign County, but lying along an east-west road. Just to the east of the magic circle was a construction sign on the road (too far away to read it, but it looked like "End Construction" if I know my road sign shapes. Just to the north of the point, I saw that there was a hill on the topo maps. It's interesting to note that the farm house that obviously owns this dashpoint is indeed squarely on top of this rise. Ryan and I also figured out one of our problems at this point. He was using a magnetic compass for bearings, and my GPS was set to True North. After a change in the settings on my end, we were soon matched up. Fourth score of the day with Aero-Dashing! 3 points for Markwell (and Ryan) and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-BYYS Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 40.2456° W 088.3311° State: Illinois Date Tried: 7/25/2004 9:40 am Hunters: Kelly, Ryan the Pilot NW of Champaign, IL 96.71 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Adventures in Aero-Dashing: Part 5 Altitude: 54 feet (16m) 3-Dimensional Distance: 86 m This was the lowest altitude we reached for a dashpoint - and my friend Ryan the Pilot even scared me a little with this one (even though he didn't know it at the time). The point is northwest of Champaign, and north of Mahomet, IL. We approached from the area of the interstate interchange, and Ryan started his descent. As we honed in on the target, we saw that from the topo maps it was right near a building, and - spotting the white house that was having some construction done on it - we headed nearby. Man - from my calculations, it appears that we were just over 54 feet from the ground. Definitely in the magic hemisphere of scoring. Fifth score of the day with Aero-Dashing! 3 points for Markwell (and Ryan) and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD37-BYWA Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 40.9953° W 088.6338° State: Illinois Date Found: 7/25/2004 10:33 am Hunters: Kelly, Ryan the Pilot West of Odell, IL, Due N of the Pontiac Municiple Airport 49.43 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Adventures in Aero-Dashing: Part 6 Altitude: 82 feet (25m) 3-Dimensional Distance: 81 m We stopped for refueling and a bathroom break at the Pontiac Municiple Airport, due south of our last point, and about 8 miles away. After takeoff, Ryan turned to a heading of 356° (Magnetic North), and we were off. Keeping a pretty low altitude, Ryan and I watched as we passed the cemetery to our west, and zeroed in on the irrigation ditch as shown on our maps. It was a pretty easy fly-by, by just following the ditch. We knew that if we travelled just to it's north, we'd score. Open bean field. Sixth score of the day with Aero-Dashing! 3 points for Markwell (and Ryan) and Trailblazers

Boundary Hill by Stunod N 41° 44.618 W 088° 03.477 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/31/2004 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

I was out Geogolfing and finishing up my course when this one showed up on my radar screen as really close. I didn't have any clues except the name of the cache and the coordinates (and that it was a regular-sized container). Found the parking easily and hoofed it in. Only slight problems in satellite configuration pointing me the wrong way, and then I found the cache in a likely spot. Great hidden park.

It’s Puzzling by Charles Street Gang N 41° 43.420 W 088° 07.920 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/31/2004 Hunters: Kelly

RCT2

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Having found Ms. Weigand's Bitter Divorce here back in August of 2002, I knew this park pretty well. Found the cache in short order and grabbed the travel bug. Not a bad hide at all.

Shadow of the Mighty Maple by ChicagoGeoTracker N 41° 42.429 W 088° 07.664 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 7/31/2004 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Well I had this one listed in my GPS as “As Simple as It Gets” from when the cache first appeared on the site. Not quite simple, and not quite a 1 star terrain, but still fairly easy. I love old trees, and this had two examples!

Geo-Golf Course Completed Course: GGAAKM Course Radius: 12.1 Center: 41.7257, -88.1803 Total Strokes: 36 7/26/2004 - 7/31/2004 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. This was a throw-back to the original criteria I used: directly half-way between my office and home, with a 12.1 km radius.

Back to June 2004
On to August 2004

Last Updated:
July 31 2004 17:30 CDT