Team Markwell's GPS Adventures
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First Quarter 2008

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD79-CAAW Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 42.2512° W 088.0010° State: Illinois Date Found: 1/2/2008 10:45 am Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 15°F/-9°C Closest Distance: 45.4 meters Mundelein, North of Chicago 43.62 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Almost Right Where I Was Before Back on the road, I hit this dashpoint which was only 10km from the last one I hit on Dec 29. According to a Wikimedia article: In 1921, Archbishop George Mundelein (later Cardinal) of Chicago purchased the property formerly owned by Sheldon's school. On it, for about $10 million (1921 dollars), he had constructed St. Mary's of the Lake Seminary. This seminary is still in operation, hosting up to 400 students. The location of the dashpoint was far from the seminary, but along the eastern banks of Diamond Lake. The lake was frozen solid on this blustery day and some of the outside vestigal decorations on the houses are still clinging due to the residents not wanting to freeze their tails off. The homes in this tiny neighborhood bounded by Lake street to the west are not what I would call “up scale”, but they are reasonably well kept and small yards. The house with the dashpoint was blue-gray with a white porch and several stockings hung on the porch. I'll upload a picture of the porch and the frozen Diamond Lake over the next couple of days. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD79-CAAP Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.7014° W 088.0892° State: Illinois Date Found: 1/13/2008 2:13 pm Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 38°F/3°C Closest Distance: 26.6 meters Bolingbrook, IL 8.25 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: West of Day Camp A very nice and close dashpoint considering the proximity of the others in the past few months. This dashpoint lies in Bolingbrook Illinois, and a scant 700 meters from where I have taught land navigation for Cub Scout Day Camp for the last three years. The point lies in the yard of a corner beige house with Neptune Construction vehicles in the driveway (obviously the owner lives there).

Click on Geovexilla Icon to see the Map VX12-XUHU Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.7897° W 088.0098° State: Illinois Date Found: 1/13/2008 2:36 pm Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 38°F/3°C Closest Distance: 17.6 meters Flag: Virgin Islands Main Street, Downers Grove 15.19 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Geovexilla Name: West Suburban Bank ATM Out for a meeting for our annual conference (of which I've espoused many times on Geodashing) I hit this by sitting at the ATM of a West Suburban Bank on Main Street in Downers Grove, IL

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD80-CAAW Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.6205° W 088.3035° State: Illinois Date Found: 2/9/2008 2:24 pm Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 35°F/2°C Closest Distance: 79.3 meters Farmland west of Plainfield, SW of Chicago 4.17 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Keller's is Closed for the Winter On a day that's been predicted to have a temperature drop from 45°F/7°C to -6°F/-21°C I took the opportunity to head out and hit this farmland dashpoint before the cold front moved through. Johnson Road is a typical grid road in farmland, made up of roads straight E/W and N/S in one mile intervals. Keller's Farm is a local farm that has three major outlets in the vicinity of my home - one a couple miles to the south, one about 3 miles to the east and this one about 4 miles to the southwest. This farmstand held a corn maze this past fall. But today, the farm had a sign out saying they were CLOSED FOR THE SEASON, and the bleak winter landscape of flat prairie land covered in snow was only broken by the stubble of corn stalks poking through the snow like 5 o'clock shadow on some weary office worker. The dashpoint required a quick jaunt out of the car into the field, but not much more than that. I drove back home and arrived there less than 7 minutes after scoring the dashpoint. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Geovexilla Icon to see the Map VX14-DORI Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.7403° W 087.8651° State: Illinois Date Found: 2/18/2008 1:00 pm Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 10°F/-12°C Closest Distance: 2.7 meters Flag: Afghanistan Justice, IL 19.93 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Geovexilla Name: Justice and Resurrection Mary In Justice, IL - in the driveway in between houses (which provides garage access) along Archer Avenue (171), just south of Resurrection Cemetery, one of the most haunted cemeteries in the Chicago area - austensibly haunted by Resurrection Mary. Peach house to the west had a standard pre-built swingset.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD80-CAIW Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.5443° W 087.6257° State: Illinois Date Found: 2/18/2008 1:29 pm Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 10°F/-12°C Closest Distance: 79.3 meters Glenwood, Illinois, south of Chicago 31.84 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Thinking Outside the Badge On a day off, I decided to take a short trip around the area to hit a couple of Geovexilla marks and a dashpoint. This was one of those points on that day. The dashpoint is located in Glenwood, IL, just off the pavement of the parking lot of the corporate office of Landauer (website: landauerinc.com). According to their website... Landauer is the world leader in personnel radiation monitoring with a third generation proprietary state-of-the-art technology, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). Both the Luxel full service program and the InLight onsite turnkey analysis systems make OSL available no matter what your monitoring requirements. So after checking that I had no radition contamination from my GPS, I scored the point as an easy drive-up and went on to hit the Geovexilla point. 3 already reported points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Geovexilla Icon to see the Map VX13-YJOG Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.4703° W 087.8440° State: Illinois Date Found: 2/18/2008 2:14 pm Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 10°F/-12°C Closest Distance: 29.7 meters Flag: Guinea Farmland Near Frankfort, IL 23.16 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Geovexilla Name: Steger Road Pond Driving back after hitting GD80-CAIW, I took the back country roads and wound up on Steger Road. The farmland to the north of the road has a pond in the aerial shots (and in real life). With the heavy rains yesterday, the pond was full - and with the cold temps today, the pond was frozen.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD81-CAAH Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.4838° W 088.2640° State: Illinois Date Found: 3/1/2008 4:14 pm Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 45°F/7°C Closest Distance: 38.6 meters Minooka Power Station 11.11 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: After the Scout Session With Wood Badge training coming up for scout leaders, we had a session called Trainers' Development Conference. My handbell choir saw me in a scout uniform today and said "Scout Event"? My answer was 'kind of'. I work with scouts. I also teach scout leaders how to work with scouts. Today's class was a once-a-year training session in teaching scout leaders to teach scout leaders to work with scouts. At that point my handbell choir people said 'Yea - it's a scout event'. ;-) But on my way back from the Council Headquarters in Morris, I was able to stop by GD81-CAAH, which lies just north of Minooka, IL on 'Wiley' or 'Wily' Road depending on the street sign. The house to the southwest belongs to the Roberts Family - according to the mailbox - and is 560 Wiley Road. There's a Fleece Truck filling station at the farmhouse just to the north of the point, where I was 38 meters away. The point actually lies among three large grain storage bins, but this was more than close enough to score. If you zoom out enough on the Terra Server image you can see a power plant owned by NRG Energy / LS Power, LLC that was completed in 2002. The facility is a Thermal Power, Combined-cycle Power plant with a capacity of 1,160 megawatts (according to a PDF document at slthermal.com/pdf/Minooka%20_Kendall_,%20Illionis.pdf). 3 Powered Up Points for Markwell and Trailblazers

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Last Updated:
April 7 2008