2009-04-14 40 -74

Participants

GISninja is looking to go after work

Plans

Depending on how much it rains today I'll either go after I get off of work (which means pictures from an older camera phone) or I go home and grab a rain jacket, different shoes, and a real camera and go back. The point looks to be about 560 feet from the trail that goes to Group Campsite B. Going by this map, if you follow the way campsite 36 goes off the parking spot, the hash point is between that and the legend.

Expedition

Before I left work I looked at the radar and cursed the gods. My first geohash, which wasn't exactly a walk in the (state) park, was going to be a wet one too. Driving home, I started thinking about things. Which camera to take? (I ended up using 3!) Where's that silly plastic waterproof jacket? Is my PSP charged? All great questions in their own right. Only problem was I forgot some important things like "Maybe I should have grabbed a ziploc for the PSP," and "Maybe I should have written down the actual coordinates somewhere," or "How charged are those batteries?" Simple things really.

So, packed with things I needed and thinking of the other items I needed on the drive down, I easily made it to Jenny Jump State Forest. The entrance was well marked, and with no fees to enter or park, I made my way to campsite 36. After goofing around a bit during work, I figured that was the best place to park as it was relatively close. Simple enough? Yeah, sure.

First thing I did was make sure I got my rain jacket out. This wonderful bit of plastic helped me in the vast nowhere known as Mason, TX back in 2008 and it was great to find out it still did its job in 2009. Now came the challenge of figuring out how to keep the rest of me dry. I decided against taking my DSLR and just went with my phone, 7 year old P&S camera, and PSP. Good choice to leave the DSLR behind because none of those stayed very dry for long. Ziploc bags? Who needs 'em!

Finally, I left my car and headed towards where I figured the hash was. Walking in some direction, I wondered how and where Jenny might have jumped. After coming over a small rock ridge, I saw where she might have done it. Of course, standing at the bottom and looking up at it I wondered how she could have met her demise. After standing further up and looking back down (and coming back down), I could easily see how one could meet an untimely fate.

But that's beside the point. Rain and slippery rocks make sure you don't spend too much time thinking about other things, like where can I stand so that the GPS says I'm not moving around so much? Speaking of, why can't I see exactly where I put that POI earlier? Oh yeah... that's what I get for not writing it down. I had tried using the SMS thing, but either I put stuff in wrong. I sent 2 different messages thinking I could get coordinates without the date ("40 -47" and "40, -47"). Thinking about it now, I bet I shouldn't have had a space in there. Errr... whatever...

I did my best to guess where the point was by moving the cursor over the POI and getting a rough estimate of where it was. After some walking around, going too far east, then too far north, I finally got to where I figured it was close. Turns out it was pretty close. After deciding I had wandered back and forth over it enough, I took some pictures of myself. I thought it would be cool to have a picture of me jumping, but the batteries in the camera decided to die. I don't even remember when they had been charged last, so that didn't really come as much of a surprise. After that, it was a wet walk back to my car, stopping to see some random branches piled up, and then more rain as I drove home.