2010-03-08 45 -122

Location

Up on the Washington side of the river, to the east. Seems to be fairly close to a road, and in an open space, may require permission.

Participants

Plans

According to Clark County's tax maps, the property is owned by the City of Vancouver! parcel1 Unfortunately that link won't take you to the specific property, but if you search for account number 162509000 on the "Find Parcel" link, it will take you there. parcel2 - APR

It kinda looks like a park on Google Maps - Jim

I was guessing a school, because the outbuildings looked like portables. -Rhonda

Expedition

After some initial planning during the day, and brief conversations with Jim, Rhonda, and aperfectring, in which none of them really talked at the same time, aperfectring left work a little early. We decided that taking one car to the hashpoint seemed to be the best way to go, and since neither Jim nor aperfectring wanted to find parking in the city, where Rhonda's hotel was, that meant aperfectring was the best candidate for driving.

After some relatively brief wrestling with traffic to get down into the city, aperfectring successfully maneuvered his way to Rhonda's hotel, and Jim walked up to the door to find her, carrying his GPS to make sure he was easily identifiable. They all then drove a very circuitous route towards the hashpoint, very happy that aperfectring's GPS nav unit was dictating (and recalculating) directions, because they would have gotten hopelessly lost with a set of printed directions. They eventually made it to the school where the hashpoint lay, and it looked slightly discouragingly fenced in. As they pulled into the parking spot, though, they noticed that it was trivial to get into the fenced area, there wasn't even a gate. There was a sign on the fence which said that all organized activities using school district property must have permission. Fortunately, geohashing is anything but an organized activity, so they entered with a clear conscience.

As they were walking over to the trees which the hashpoint lay under, along a convenient paved path which looped into sight of their flashlight beams a few steps into the field, they happily noticed a complete lack of the expected underbrush which usually accompanies trees in the area. Approaching further, they noticed some picnic tables under the cover of said trees. Then they noticed that the reason they could see all of this from such a distance when they were using flashlights to light their way, was because there was a lamp post right in the middle of the trees. As they got even closer, they began to realize that the hashpoint looked to be almost directly below the lamp post.

Pictures were taken, pine cones were rearranged, comments were made about the unexpected easiness of the expedition, and they headed back to the car. There they discussed dinner, and decided to visit the Thai Orchard in Vancouver (Washington). Once in the restaurant, they took a very long time talking about this and that, and not really deciding upon what to eat. Eventually they made a couple of choices, and asked for suggestions from the waitress for a third. Delicious food was eaten, and then one more wrong turn, and dropping off of Rhonda, then Jim.