2009-09-11 37 -121
| Fri 11 Sep 2009 in 37,-121: 37.9105008, -121.9991580 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
Someone's backyard. They named their house and property Rancho Presta del Sol, or something like that. The actual point was in a grape bush. I don't have any pictures of me at the exact point, but I passed within 2 feet of it.
Participants
Plans
I was looking through this wiki yesterday and decided to go to the best one today. I checked around 4:30, and was astonished to find it was just 1.8 miles from my house.
Expedition
This was a fairly uneventful trip. I started out on my bike and the first 1.7 miles was easy. Some uphill, some downhill, some changing gears, not much worth mentioning. Then the street I wanted to go up turned out to be a gated community. So I continued upward, hoping for another way in. I went down the next street along Northgate Road. At the end, I looked for wi-fi to try and get more information from google maps. Unfortunately, everything was locked. So I looked around, and saw the road I was trying to get to, but it was behind a few fences. I went back to my bike, and headed back to Northgate Road.
I continued up the road and again took the next street. This time it paid off. I got most of the way down the street, and stopped in the bottom left corner of the overhead picture on this page. Luck was with me, for there was open wi-fi, and pretty strong. I confirmed I was where I thought I was. I was very close! I saw there was a small path toward an open field I remembered being right next to the hash. I went down the trail, and into the field with my bike slipping down the steep slope. I stopped, pulled out my laptop with the image in it's cache, and realized I was in the wrong place. So I turned around, and had to push my bike up the steep slope. I parked it across the street, and went to the backyard for a closer look.
I could see all the same features in the backyard as on the satellite image. There wasn't a gate. I went to the front of the house, where they had a fancy dialpad. I pressed the call button, and let it ring. No one answered, and so I hung up on the answering machine. I was determined not to fail my first time. So I went down the path a little, and hopped the fence. I walked over to their rows of bushes, which I didn't know the nature of yet. It turns out they had rose bushes almost blocking the entrance to the rows of grape vines. I guessed at which row to go down, went down it, took pictures, and left.
I got back on my bike, took several documentary pictures and proceeded home. In retrospect, I went too far down the row to take my pictures, but I did pick the right row.
Photos
Google overhead, which when combined with following, demonstrates proof.
Me in front of the house on the right. The driveway and plants match.
Me at the point. The rows in the google image are actually grape vines.
Me in front of street sign for Shell Ridge Trail, the road in front of these houses.
Me at the house, in front.
My bike and me.
