Team Markwell's GPS Adventures
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November 2005

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD53-CAAM Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.8699° W 088.1418° State: Illinois Date Found: 11/1/2005 1:10 pm Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 63°F/17°C Winfield, Illinois - Due West of Chicago, IL 16.33 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Courthouse Parking and Metra Trains The hamlet of Winfield, Illinois is the County Seat for DuPage County, one of the most collar counties to the Chicagoland area. This little town is where teachers go to register their teaching certificate, and where traffic violators go to plead their speeding tickets. It's also the sherriff's office and much of the county adminstration. The dashpoint lies on the commuter rail tracks that skirt the northern edge of the County Administration complex in Winfield. I was able to score the dashpoint by driving around the north edge of the complex, near where the sherriff's cars are parked and the entrance to the county lockup. But as I parked at the 40 meter mark, a commuter rail train came whizzing east-bound in to Chicago on the Chicago-Northwestern Line, carrying every single passenger and rail worker on that train closer to the dashpoint than I could ever reach in my car (at least as close as I could get without a sherriff looking out the window and arresting the idiot on the tracks). But despite my sharing this dashpoint visit with hundreds (thousands?) of people daily, I visited on November 1, thus securing my 3 points for the team. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Balrog by 4-Unpaved N 41° 31.823 W 088° 11.663 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 11/6/2005 Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry, Pack 13

Cycling Snoopy

White Jeep Travel Bug: Thurleah

Pack13 Cub Scouts

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

We had planned a hike with the Scouts of Pack 13 for a nice winter afternoon, and this cache seemed like a great one. After the rain the previous night, we were prepared for mud, but the soft carpet of yellow and orange leaves blanketed the area, with hardly a trace of mud. We found the first stage by using the hint, as the coordinates were bouncing around quite a bit, but the second stage was right on. We traded heavily, leaving the container bursting at the seams, and left a White Jeep, a Snoopy on a Motorcyle and a new Travel Bug, Pack13 Cub Scouts.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD53-BYVA Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.7904° W 088.8317° State: Illinois Date Found: 11/26/2005 1:31 pm Hunters: Kelly, Sam, Wags Temperature: 48°F/9°C North of Shabbona, Extreme West of Chicago 32.75 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Shabbona (again) and Kuzco With 8 historic dashpoints falling within 10 miles of Shabbona State Park, and with our family and Cub Scout Pack taking multiple trips out here, this dashpoint was a must find. Also, I had reports on my cache The Phoenix (GCG9TD) having problems, I decided to take my youngest boy and Wags out on the trip. The dashpoint was 2.67 miles north of the cache I had placed in the forest preserve. So, after traveling west on the old Lincoln Highway - US Route 30 (a path I know well from the Geo-world) - I took a north turn at the sign for Howard Kaufmann's Ho-Ka Turkeys (appropriate for the Saturday after Thanksgiving), just west of Waterman and east of the town of Shabbona. After a couple of miles north on this grid of roads, and a mile-and-one-half to the west, I was just north of the Leo Simons farm. This particular farmer subscribes to the Tribune Chronical (as his newspaper box indicates) and he's had the savvy to place fast growing evergreen trees around the entire perimeter of his farm house. In this barren land of empty fields in the winter, the snow will blow across until it hits the first obstacle and then "mount to the sky". So - better that the snow's first obstacle be a line of evergreens than a house. The dashpoint itself was on Lee Road just to the north of the driveway. I'll take this opportunity to say that my Travel Bug Scout, the Dashing Llama (TB80D1) has gone to that great dashpoint in the sky. Doc-Dean placed it in Critter Stash Kiddie Cache back in April, and Coasternut indicated it was gone. So, his brother, Kuzco, the Dashing Llama (TBKZ1B) went with me on this dashpoint, and the subsequent hunt for my cache, which turned up missing, before landing in a cache about 20 miles east. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

The Phoenix by Markwell N 41° 45.379 W 088° 51.378 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Revisited: 11/26/2005 Hunters: Kelly, Sam and Wags

Kuzco, the Dashing Llama

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

After hearing that someone couldn't find this cache, I unfortuantely, looked and came to the conclusion that indeed, the cache was gone. As this cache was one of my farthest ones to maintain, I'll archive it for now - with the hopes of bringing it back sometime.

PopCorners' CITO by tjbrr N 41° 42.304 W 088° 26.757 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 11/26/2005 Hunters: Kelly, Sam, Wags

Kuzco, the Dashing Llama

Skipper

USA Geocoin

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

I've loved this area with the majestic birches that stretch high into the sky. I remember the first time visiting with the original Popcorners cache and looking up and coming to the realization that these WERE birch trees. Wow. Cache was exactly where SAM figured it would be. Wags had a blast romping through the area (on leash, of course). We used this cache to re-release a USA Geocoin I've held on to for far too long, and to release two new Travel Bugs: Skipper and Kuzco.

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Last Updated:
November 28 2005 1:45 CST