Team Markwell's GPS Adventures
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Fourth Quarter 2008

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD88-BYTU Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 40.5187° W 088.9525° State: Illinois Date Found: 10/11/2008 2:40 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam Temperature: 76°F/24°C Closest Distance: 32.6 meters Business 55 in Bloomington Normal 86.26 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Near Goodwill at ISU Band Day Went out with the boys to watch Illinois State University's Band Day competition for high school marching bands. Saw this dashpoint was a drive-by, so took advantage. Illinois State University is my old alma mater, although I feel no great ties other than appreciation for the education. The old Route 66 goes through Bloomington-Normal, and the Business 55 follows that route. This point is on the Business 55, or at least about 30 meters from it. The point lies in the parking lot of an apartment complex called Pine Crest Apartments, which is right next to a Goodwill Thrift store. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Pack 91 Den 7 - 2008 by Team Maggie and the Den 7 Cub Scouts N 41° 35.730 W 088° 13.526 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Found: 11/1/2008 Hunters: Kelly, Drew

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Went out to work with some scouts on their orienteering portion of their First Class requirements. Found this as part of the trek. Good cache - nicely done.

Cachiversary 3: Anderson's Introduction by Markwell N 41° 35.794 W 088° 13.624 Difficulty: Terrain: Date Revisited: 11/1/2008 Hunters: Kelly, Drew

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is cache.

Did the circuit around Mather Woods to help some of the boys with their orienteering portion of first class. Cache is in good shape.

Click on Geovexilla Icon to see the Map VX22-HYUV Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.8595° W 087.8527° State: Illinois Date Found: 11/12/2008 10:25 am Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 50°F/10°C Closest Distance: 2.9 meters Flag: Canada Maywood/Broadview area near Loyola 24.49 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is Geovexilla point.

Geovexilla Name: When is 17 between 14 and 15? Seeker: Markwell Closest Approach: 3m Temp at Find: 50°F/1°C Date/Time Closest (CST): Nov 12 2008 10:25:32 am Date/Time Closest (UTC): Nov 12 2008 4:25:32 pm On the way to pick up the wife in downtown Chicago after a considerably long hospital stay that resulted in an outpatient surgical procedure, I was able to take a 1 km trip off the interstate to hit this point on the way in. The residential area is full of very box-like homes, but the one housing this point was a satellite dish the size of the front door sitting on top of the one-story very cracker-box-like home.

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD89-CAFA Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.4791° W 087.9282° State: Illinois Date Tried: 11/26/2008 5:00 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry Temperature: 28°F/-2°C Closest Distance: 174.7 meters New Lenox, IL, SSW of Chicago 19.17 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Abandoned Airport? We left for Michigan for our family reunion on the wife's side on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving - much later than I had wanted. If you look at the maps of the interstate expressways several interstates (94, 294 90, 88, 55, 57, 65 and 80) all converge in a 50 mile east-west corridor to the southwest and south and Chicago with most of them combining into one major road of I80/I90/I94, which skirts the southern edge of Lake Michigan. This is the area that I wanted to avoid with the traffic of a family-based holiday by trying to get out of work early. However, because the end of the month fell on Nov 30, the Sunday after the holiday weekend, I wasn't able to get out at noon as I proposed, but rather 2:00, and I was stuck in horrendous traffic. Our decision was to get off the interstate and take a large east-west blacktop paralleling this mass of humanity. The good news is that it brought us within possible reach of GD89-CAFA. The maps and aerial shots all show the area to the east of this dashpoint as a viable airport, but it looks like it's been recently razed or abandoned as I saw several large piles of earth in the area (not ideal for landing) and no control tower. The closest approach by car was about 175 meters to the east, which I contented myself with for a non-score, as the family was itching to get going. The point is in a farmfield. 0 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD89-CIFI Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 42.2645° W 083.9157° State: Michigan Date Found: 11/28/2008 9:39 am Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam, Sherry Temperature: 41°F/5°C Closest Distance: 63.4 meters Chelsea, Michigan 225.55 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Farm on the Hill - No Hunting (yea right) On the way back from our family reunion, the wife wasn't feeling the best so she napped in the car while the boys played video games and watched DVDs. I saw a dashpoint blip up and decided to follow, knowing that it only added 20 minutes to the trip. So we exited at milemarker 167 with a Travel America sporting gas prices of $1.68/gallon and followed good roads until about 1 mile from the point. Then the roads turned into this brown fine mush that must be gravel in the summertime, but left a nasty looking film on the side of the car. One mile west and we passed the Farm on the Hill (or so it was aptly named by the sign out front) and turned south. The new road wasn't in much better condition, but it narrowed to little more than 1˝-car-widths. As we approached the point at 63 meters, a forested area loomed up to the east with a row of trees marking a property line to the west. Almost every other tree was posted with “POSTED No Trespassing - No Hunting”. We slowed and marked the point and continued to the next farmhouse driveway, but on the way passed a camo jeep and a hunter all in camo getting out of the back of the jeep with his rifle. We turned around in the driveway and had to pass the jeep again - and the potential hunter looked LONG and HARD at our vehicle to see if we were scoping him out. Needless to say I didn't linger in the area for photographs. It's deer hunting season in Michigan. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD90-BYYF Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.5712° W 088.4064° State: Illinois Date Found: 12/5/2008 10:45 am Hunters: Kelly Temperature: 4°F/-16°C Closest Distance: 44.0 meters Yorkville Area, west of Chicago 32.52 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: Familiar Territory in the Farmland One of the two “quick trip” dashpoints I have this month, this point lies about 10 miles (17km) to the west-south-west of home in the farmland country between Plainfield, Illinois and Yorkville, Illinois. Since my eye doctor visit was in Yorkville, I battled some of the drifting snow on some of the back country roads and landed near the intersection of Ashley Road and Walker Road. Walker Road is aptly named from Jesse Walker - founder of Plainfield and of my church Plainfield United Methodist Church back in 1838. The dashpoint is non-descript, lying in the harvested corn field about 44 meters to the west of Ashley Road. The stubble of the corn stalks peeked their heads out of the frosty snow like so many gravestones in an eerie and bleak farmland landscape. It's a dreary time of year in Illinois. According to my records, this is the 300th Dashpoint for which I've submitted some type of report. Two of them were by remote control, so the GPSGames.org site shows me at 298. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

Click on Dash Icon to see the Map GD90-CAAF Terra Server Picture Coordinates: N 41.5658° W 088.0671° State: Illinois Date Found: 12/20/2008 2:13 pm Hunters: Kelly, Drew, Sam Temperature: 31°F/-1°C Closest Distance: 84.8 meters Lockport, IL southwest of Chicago 9.88 miles from home

Green Dot is home. Blue Dot is dashpoint.

Dashpoint Name: USpeedy Tools This was the Saturday before Christmas. The wife's present is all picked out, and I needed to get the boys out of the house to keep them from killing each other. So we piled into the little Olds Cutlass and made our way across the 9th Street Bridge in Lockport (view available here) to Lockport, an aptly named town with ports along the locks of the old I&M Canal and Des Plaines River. After heading a little south of the bridge, we passed Dellwood Park and landed near Bruce Road - named after a local family farm that has ties to my family. My sister married into one of the Bruces of Lockport (but there are MANY). The dashpoint is the back lot of a trucking area, but the recent snows made it tough to gain access to the actual point. So I did my best by entering the parking lot of the USpeedy Tools located on South Street just (aptly named again) to the south of the point. From the farthest northern point of the parking lot, I was able to reach 85 meters. 3 points for Markwell and Trailblazers

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Last Updated:
Apr 16 2009