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

Back Home

October 2004

Geo-Golf Course Completed Course: GGAAKY Course Radius: 12.1 Center: 41.7257, -88.1803 Total Strokes: 44 8/16/2004 - 10/1/2004 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.

The Griffin by Markwell and Mission 12: Blind Canal Griffin N 41° 26.995 W 088° 15.305 Difficulty: Terrain: Mission 12: Blind Canal N 41° 23.329 W 088° 14.780 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Fixed: 10/2/2004 Fixers: Kelly, Drew, Mikayla, Blake, Carmen and Mike

BUBBLES Travel Bug into Mission 12

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is The Griffin. Orange Dot is Mission 12.

Today, we were scheduled to head down to the area for the annual BSA Colorwalk supporting the Boy Scouts of the Rainbow Council. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the Colorwalk on time, but instead we went down to the Channahon/Minooka area to do some cache maintenance. First stop was the Planet of the Apes Cache Mission 12: Blind Canal. My wife's sister and her family accompanied my older son and I via bike through the woods and had a great time. Unfortunately, the cache was in pretty poor condition, but about 10 minutes cleaned it up and resupplied it. Hopefully, all is in line with Will County Forest Preserve guidelines now. Next stop was The Griffin, a Pack13 cache, that had reports of a waterlogged log book. Unfortunately, the situation was worse than that. When I got there (after admiring the wedding party taking pictures by the park's pavillion), we couldn't find the cache in its intended spot. We were about to give up, when we spotted the remnants that had washed down the stream. The log book was unsalvagable, and only the lid and a few contents could be found. The only thing that didn't eventually get pitched into the garbage was a Mickey Mouse beanie baby thingy from McDonalds that was individually wrapped in plastic. I'll replace the cache in a slightly different position with a better container by the end of the month.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD40-BYYR Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.4626° W 088.4253° State: Illinois Date Found: 10/2/2004 5:35 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew Route 47 between Yorkville and Morris, IL (Far West of Chicago) 16.06 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: 2,800 O.B.O First dashpoint of the month! Route 47 is a road going straight north to the border of Illinois and Wisconsin (I've been there on it) all the way south I-72 (just west of Champaign/Urbana, home of the University of Illinois). Somewhere along this straight as an arrow 2-lane highway lies the towns of Yorkville and Morris. Morris actually lies at the intersection of Route 47 and I-80. Between those two towns lies this dashpoint - somewhat southwest of the Wheelbarrel of Fun that I reported in Plattville, IL with the dashpoint GD27-BYUZ (we saw it again today on the way home). My son Drew and I pulled up to a little pull out of gravel along the southbound lane of Route 47 just opposite a farmhouse. The dashpoint was some 150 meters to the west, but the field north of the point had just had its corn harvested, while the field containing the dashpoint was still on the stalks. Knowing the lay of the land from the terra server images, I knew there was a tree within scoring range, and a tree in these parts means a property line. Farmers don't usually care as much about people walking property lines, so I put the blinkers on and left my kid in the car playing his gameboy. I hoofed the 50 meters to the scoring range (short of the tree) and clicked the GPS at about 98 meters and retreated. Once back in the car, I started making my notes about interesting landmarks, and the best was right on the east side of Route 47 from where I parked. The farmer was advertising selling either a trailer or an antique piece of farm equipment on the trailer (or both?) for $2,800 O.B.O. (or best offer).

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD40-CAAX Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.3920° W 088.0844° State: Illinois Date Tried: 10/3/2004 12:13 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry, Wags Off Route 53, East of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Cemetery 18.90 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Midewin Tallgrass Prairie - Those are HUNTERS! Back on GD38-BYZY that I visited back on August 8, the dashpoint landed in the old Joliet Arsenal. Guess what... Another landed in another part. GD40-CAAX is just south of Hoff Road, which is east of the Abraham Lincoln Veteran's Cemetery I mentioned in the last point. I knew that this wouldn't be scorable, but there are extra circumstances on this one. We landed just at 181 meters by driving on Hoff Road, but there was definitely no admittance (see the photos of the posted sign and the chain link/barbed wire fence). However, just east of the spot we marked was a parking area with lots of cars. It appears that the <National Midewin Tallgrass Prairie (also mentioned in the last dashpoint) were open to deer hunters today. An opening in the chainlink fence showed hunters going in and out, getting their permits checked. Not being a deer hunter, and having a wife, two kids and a Golden Retreiver (Wags the Geo Dog accompanied), we didn't feel going in for something like a dashpoint was the smartest thing. So, 0 points for Markwell and Trailblazers (and Wags the GeoDog).

Swift by Greenback N 41° 26.901 W 088° 14.037 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 10/3/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry, Wags

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Found it in short order, but the kids were able to romp and play.

The Griffin by Markwell N 41° 26.995 W 088° 15.305 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Fixed: 10/3/2004 Fixers: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry, Wags

Monty

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Didn't think I would get back out here as soon as I did, but the wife said that she wanted to go out. Cool opportunity to have Wags find this cache, and to take the boys out into the woods again. The new cache is in an ammo box in a new location, so I had to update the cache page with new distance and bearing.

Attenhut! by Charles Street Gang N 41° 49.419 W 088° 08.507 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 10/13/2004 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

I like my online logs for this pair of caches so much that I'll just duplicate them here… What memories! Back in March of 2001 when I started Geocaching, I went out to find GC2F9 - Herrick Lake Stash, which was less than a mile from my office. I found it on a cold rainy day in March and then took my son back out on the weekend and nearly froze my tushy off. However, on the way back from that really long hike, I made reference to a cool feature. Amazing how things cycle back to you. Found the cache in short order, and starting on my way to One-a-Day. Somewhere on the path near a game trail, a man in a black jacket vanished…

One-a-day by Charles Street Gang N 41° 49.439 W 088° 08.355 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 10/13/2004 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

...Somewhere on the path near a game trail, a man in a black jacket emerged from the woods. I strolled the lovely amber-hued path, listening the gentle rustle of the squirrels foraging for nuts, and the occassional FORE from the neighboring golf club. Walked right up to the cache location, picked up the container, which was visible from the path, signed the log book and hid it just a little better - at least out of sight.

Cerny Park by GeoRon N 41° 48.673 W 088° 10.580 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Tried: 10/14/2004 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Went on my lunch hour, looked with a fine tooth comb for about 20 minutes and then had to give up due to time constraints. According to the Terra Server image, I was looking in the exact spot.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD40-CAFU Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.7386° W 087.8011° State: Illinois Date Found: 10/16/2004 11:05 am Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam Polish Neighborhood in Bridgeview, IL (SW Chicago) 23.07 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Stinkley Sanitary District The wife needed some time to do some work around the house, so I piled the boys into the car and headed off for the last quick dash of the month. This was a driveby that was easily accessible from interstate travel, so we went up I-55 and turned southbound to the I-294 tollroad. From there it was an easy exit and then up Harlem Avenue to an old Polish section of Bridgeview, Illinois. There were numerous signs in Polish and a Polish Deli nearby. We pulled into the driveway of a two-story brownstone house with a four foot chainlink fence around the property. SCORED at 23 meters. Drew, Sam and I looked around for something distinguishing this area for a name for the dashpoint, and we landed on the watertower. From the parking lot to the north (still within scoring range) I wrote down "Stinkley Sanitary District" and chuckled to myself. 3 more points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Honey Do by Charles Street Gang N 41° 43.795 W 088° 06.952 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 10/17/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sherry, Wags

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

VERY easy cache - walked right up to it while Drew played on the playground nearby.

Geo-Golf Course Completed Course: GGAAMX Course Radius: 12.1 Center: 41.7257, -88.1803 Total Strokes: 35 10/1/2004 - 10/17/2004 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. Duplicate of last course

Ramp-Art by seeker22 N 41° 45.340 W 088° 02.974 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 10/17/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sherry, Wags

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

This is what caching is supposed to be. Great trails, ambiguous parking, misdirection, difficult terrain to cross: all leading to a cool cache. We approached this one from the south (probably not the intended path), and hit the last golfpoint of a GeoGolf course first, and then found a winding trail. Getting within about 100 feet, I thought there might be a better approach from another fork in a cache. It wasn't until we took that wrong turn that we discovered the Ramparts the cache mentions. Emboldened by this discovery, we trapsed the hills (Wags and Drew loving every minute) and kept getting further and further away. At about 178 feet, I thought I would bushwack it - NO GO. Back to the older closest point, and it was an easy 100 foot walk to an obvious target. Ingenious method of securing the cache, too. Took nothing and left nothing.

My friend’s cache by fallenfaery N 41° 33.901 W 088° 08.444 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 10/26/2004 Hunters: Kelly

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

From the GeoLex: DPM – Including the letters “DPM” in a cache log was a once-secret way to indicate the cache was of low quality. DPM is an abbreviation for “des palourdes mortes", which is French for “the dead clams”. The entire French phrase is “Les longs sanglots des palourdes mortes blessent mon coeur avec un languor monotone pendant qu'ils dansent à minuit", which translates to “The long sobs of the dead clams wound my heart with a monotonous languor as they dance at midnight”. The idea was to include this phrase in a cache log to clue in others that the cache was of low quality. Rarely actually used, as the meaning of DPM quickly spread throughout the geocaching community, and its secrecy was lost. Les palourdes sont malades mais non mortes The clams are not dead, but they are not sick. Very rarely do I post anything overly critical about a cache - and Amy (fallenfaery) is a good friend, so this is hard to do. Why do we cache? A walk in the woods? Finding a box with trading trinkets? Maybe "your prize is the satisfaction of finding it and logging in." Maybe a very clever challenge or a fantastic camo job. I'm sorry to say that this was none of those. I drove up on the way to the dentist, parked the car not 10 feet from the cache, where I spotted it immediately (without leaving my car), grabbed it, signed the log book and retrieved the little flag stickers left in the container and drove on. The whole experience probably took 45-60 seconds.

Chicago Geocachers Group Organization Meeting by Chicagoland Geocachers N 41° 50.848 W 087° 57.691 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 10/30/2004 Hunters: Kelly, Drew

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Went to a meeting. Actually, it was a pretty good meeting of quite a few Geocachers. The general consensus seemed to be that they wanted an updated website (YEA!) and that they weren't necessarily interested in a “governing body” for Chicago Geocachers. Can't argue with anything so far. I'll be interested to see what happens in the future.

Back to September 2004
On to November 2004

Last Updated:
November 2 2004 17:00 CST