2009-02-07 42 -89
| Sat 7 Feb 2009 in Rockford: 42.9706489, -89.2761965 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Participants
starbird
Bill Minser and the Slightly Less Patient Toddler
Expedition
Part two of a multihash.
After our sojourn in the Dubuque graticule, we made our way to Lake Kegonsa for our second Walking on Water Geohash in a week. The point was about 300 m offshore, but there was no public access nearby, so we parked at Fish Camp Park and walked a mile across the ice. Our route was lengthened somewhat because we detoured around the lake's outflow into the Yahara River, as we were uncertain of the quality of the ice in the channel. (We were also uncertain of the location of the channel, so we give it a wide berth.)
This expedition was more like walking on (liquid) water than our previous experience. The recent warm weather meant that there was a lot of water on top of the ice. If you've never walked on 25 cm of ice with 3-4 cm of water on top of it, well, it's slippery. We shuffled and sloshed our way across the surface of the lake. We tried to walk where there was a little slush and not just open water. We mostly followed old snowmobile tracks, which made little ridges of compressed snow which hadn't fully melted. Of course, the tracks didn't always go in quite the same direction we wanted to go.
All in all it took us perhaps 40 minutes to get to the hashpoint. By this time the Toddler was tiring, as was her father, who was carrying her on his back. Rather than do another mile across the slippery ice, we headed for a closer point on the shore, and walked through the yard of someone's summer cottage to get to the road. Walking back along the road was much easier (if a bit less direct), although all three of us were tiring.
We had planned to celebrate our Multihash accomplishment by returning to Springers on the Kegonsa lakeshore, but tired children and restaurants don't mix well, and we had just eaten a couple of hours previously. So we all went home and took ice pirate naps instead. Arrrr!
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Bill Minser, starbird and the Slightly Less Patient Toddler earned the Walking on water geohash achievement
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Bill Minser, starbird, and the Slightly Less Patient Toddler earned the Multihash Achievement
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Photo
What are we doing in the middle of a lake?
Note: the GPS "map" thinks Lake Kegonsa is smaller than it really is. Google/peeron shows that we're well offshore.
