2009-05-22 41 -84

From Geohashing
Fri 22 May 2009 in Defiance:
41.7912766, -84.9191959
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About

The day's geohash coordinates fell in a farm of some sort (please don't tell my farming family that I didn't know what kind it was).

Expedition

excellentdude: The day had arrived where I would be leaving mid-Michigan for the summer and returning to Kirksville, Missouri, for my annual summer job. There would be a few stops (and a few geohashes) along the way, though, of course. So, before I left, I looked to see where the day's geohash coordinates fell along my potential paths to Missouri. Quite luckily for me, one set of coordinates fell less than 5 miles off one major highway I normally use. Also, these particular coordinates happened to be in Michigan in a graticule that only has about a quarter of its area in Michigan. So visiting these coordinates would help with some of my regional geohashing goals as well!

With the car loaded up for the summer, I set off down I-69. About an hour later, I took an exit off the highway and quickly found myself in the general area of the coordinates. I pulled into the driveway of the nearest house to find a man mowing the yard with a riding lawn mower and a woman doing touch up work with a push mower. The woman was just finishing as I pulled up and got out of my car. I explained what I wanted to do and asked if the geohash was on their land. She said it was, and that the two have a son who is a geocacher. She saw no problem with what I wanted to do, but since her husband was finishing and pulling up right about that time, she thought I should ask him first. Not only was he OK with it, but he said it was OK if I wanted to drive my car most of the way back to the hash. While tempting, my car isn't the greatest off-road car, and if the grass was wet at all I'd be stuck no matter how flat the ground was. So I passed on that, but thanked them both and proceeded to the hash.

A grassy pathway led me most of the way to the hash. The field I needed to enter was fenced, but after a bit of walking, there was an opening in the fence. After surveying the situation for a bit, I decided that I could enter the field at that point and walk to the hash without damaging the densely packed crops, thus saving myself of the trouble of getting over a fence without damaging crops later. I soon found two rows of crops with a wider than normal separation between them. I walked south along that space until I got to the proper latitude. I then carefully made my way east to the correct longitude for the day's hash. Success! I took the normal pictures and headed back out the way I came. When I arrived back at the house, the friendly woman and I had a pleasant conversation for about ten minutes. After that time, I decided I needed to hit the highway again, but because she was interested I gave her the address of the wiki before I left. All in all, between the weather, the people, and the location, this was a very pleasant geohash.

Achievements

Landgeohash.png
excellentdude earned the Land geohash achievement
by reaching the (41, -84) geohash on 2009-05-22.
Gift.PNG
excellentdude earned the Ambassador achievement
by obtaining permission to access the (41, -84) geohash on 2009-05-22.
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excellentdude earned the Graticule Unlocked Achievement
by being the first to reach any hashpoint in the (41, -84) graticule, here, on 2009-05-22.

Photos