Team Markwell's GPS Adventures
Non omnes vagi perditi sunt
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November 2006

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD65-CABU Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.8325° W 087.9684° State: Illinois Date Found: 11/18/2006 7:33 am Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 34°F/1°C Closest Distance: 2.4 meters Oakbrook Terrace, IL - West of Chicago 18.77 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Parade of the Plastic Soldiers Number 19 Devonshire Road houses this dashpoint just on the front lawn. It's a pleasant white brick house with a U-shaped driveway. I scored the point by pulling up next to the fire hydrant on the main road, and my GPS said I was within 1.8 feet (even though my track logs say the closest approach was 2.45 meters). The house still within the magic circle, but to the north is already decked out in its Christmas best. They take their holiday decorations very seriously. The front sidewalk was lined on both sides with light-up plastic soldiers about 2 feet tall and the driveway was lined with strings of lights waiting for the flip of the switch at dusk that would send the power meters spinning like a ham slicer at the delicatessen. Nice little peek into the holiday season just around the corner. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD65-BYWA Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.1636° W 088.7309° State: Illinois Date Found: 11/18/2006 11:53 am Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 35°F/2°C Closest Distance: 98.6 meters Central Illinois, Middle of the triangle formed by I-80, I-39 and I-55 42.11 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: On the Grid Again After dropping off some materials at the Boy Scout service center, I travelled out to the country to score this point. It seems that - as I was finding in Geogolf - after attempting 63 points over 65 games within 20 miles of home, and attempting 157 points within 50 miles of home, some of the point points start to land near other ones and bring back memories of earlier ones. This one was no exception. I came over from Morris, Illinois, on one of the paved back country straight east-west roads, and dipped down one mile to North 16th Road and over to the west to score. My early recon told me that this would be a short walk into a field, and the maps proved correct. I parked along the road and strolled into the freshly plowed field a scant 50-60 feet and hit the magic circle. After scoring, I backtracked a smidge to take a photo of the horse and donkey to the east, and then headed west to get to the main roads to head back home. As I glanced to the south, I spotted a very tall smoke stack. That looked familiar. Sure enough, I visited this area (different route) to hit GD28-BYRA back on Oct 15 2003 and came across the smokestack in Kernan, Illinois. Photo of the smoke stack can be seen by visiting GD28-BYRA's page. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD65-CAAB Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.6334° W 088.2372° State: Illinois Date Found: 11/23/2006 3:02 pm Hunters: Kelly, Wags Temperature: 57°F/14°C Closest Distance: 88.3 meters South of 135th Street - Plainfield (SW of Chicago) .78 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint. Points are extremely close together Click map to zoom in

Dashpoint Name: Tryptophan Special: A River Runs Through It After the obligatory engorgement celebration of tukey, stuffing, mashed potatos, gravy, green beans and a smidge of homemade fudge - I decided that I'd try to placate my doctor a little and take SemperFiWags out for a quick Geo-walk. The dashpoint is the second closest to my home ever - topping out at 0.78 miles (~1.25km). So we parked the car at the local parking lot for the sled hill in our neighborhood. By “hill” I really mean a bump in the landscape that was left over when they deposited the extra dirt from leveling out the farm land when they built the neighborhood. The parking lot happened to be at just about the closest spot on the road to the point. Earlier this month I considered hitting this point, but the feed corn was still in the ground and the harvesters were out. If the river had not been running through this area, we probably couldn't have gotten so close. With this creek, the land on each side is considered easement or public property, but I wouldn't want to argue with a farmer in a combine around here. So I waited for the end of the month and the Thanksgiving holiday so that the crops would be fully in. SemperFiWags and I strolled along the the creekside for about 0.17 miles (282 meters) until we reached the magic circle. Proceeding farther would not have changed much in the scenery - and I was on a time schedule. We stopped and glanced around at the glorious sky. To the west and south was open farmland as far as the eye can see. To the north and east are encroaching neighborhoods, evidence of the suburban sprawl that blights our town, unparalleled growth in this community that was once solely farm county. In the short span of about 10 years, our little hamlet has gone from 4,557 people (1990 census) to 44,284 people (2000 census). It seems that this stream is right on the cusp of that expansion. I hope Scout will forgive my fourth image - a posting of the census map showing the people per square mile for 2000, which clearly shows the dashpoint and how it rests on the razors edge of the urban and suburban sprawl. But I digress. It was a glorious day to walk with the dog, and a great day to have my GPS in hand. The milkweek had just popped open leaving its husks for our enjoyment as we walked by admiring the beauty. Thanks for the dashpoint, and thanks to those that read these reports. It truly is a day to be thankful. 3 points to Markwell (and Wags) and Trailblazers.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD65-CIYP Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 28.4191° W 081.5820° State: Florida Date Tried: 11/13/2003 1:23 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry and 50,000 other people Temperature: 82°F/28°C Closest Distance: 14.8 meters Disneyworld, Orlando, Florida 985.58 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: It's a Small World Call me unorthodox, but I just couldn't let this point slip by with NO ONE logging it. I'm claiming zero points because even though I visited this dashpoint in November, it was November of 2003, three years prior to it becoming a dashpoint. The family and I had a very memorable trip to Disney that year, complete with getting stuck on the Small World ride (where we also saw broken animatronics that hissed the Small World song - “sssssssss ss ssssss sssss sssssssssss ss sssssss”. Our sons - then 4 and 8 will long remember being stuck on the Buzz Lightyear ride in the “Zurg” room, and the flight of Mission: Space and Star Tours - the Star Wars ride, Body Wars, Space Mountain, Philharmagic, the Fantasmic! show and Tinkerbell in a light-up costume (full-sized human) flying down a zip line from the top of Cinderella's castle into an unknown landing spot in Tomorrow Land (part of the end-of-the-night show). It is truly a magical place. This point is just outside the Hall of Presidents, and only 15 meters from a Kodak Memorable Location shot where people can stand and have Cinderlla's Castle in the background. We too took that shot (I've uploaded it). I used the background of that photo and the aerial shot to try and triangulate exactly where I was on that day in 2003, and I believe I pinpointed it from the alignment of the parapets of the castle and some of the tree formations in the background. Couple that with the time/date stamp of the digital photo, and I can say empirically that my family was standing 15 meters from the dashpoint on November 14 2003 at 1:23 in the afternoon. POST SCRIPT: In my original post to the Geodashing game database, I posted that the hunters were "The Markwell Family and 500,000 other people". I originally intended it as above - 50,000, since those are the approximate daily visitors to the park, but given that the point was available for 30 days, it is likely that 1.5 million people visited this dashpoint in November 2006. Of course, since that was before the Llamas saw fit to deposit a dashpoint there, I'll claim zero points. But I wanted to wait until the last day of November to report our prior visit so that no one would be confused by my report. 0 points for Markwell and Trailblazers Apologies to chaosmanor: Wherever you went, there you were; and it really is a Small World After All.