2010-07-24 30 -86
| Sat 24 Jul 2010 in 30,-86: 30.6328885, -86.4948978 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
Eglin Reservation, southeast of Duke Field
Participants
Plans
Show up
Expedition
Today's meetup location was in a part of the Eglin reservation open to the public, about a mile southeast of Duke Field, three miles east of SR 85. Liberian had written down the latitude and longitude and also marked the spot with an "X" on his Eglin map. He left home around 3:00, driving north on SR 85, and picked up three geocaches on the way up. (They are all numbered geocaches and rather easy to find.) After the third cache, noting that the time for meeting was approaching, he set the coordinates of the meetup location into his GPS.
Then he noticed a glitch. He thought he was south and west of the meetup location, but the "go to" feature on his GPS was showing that he needed to go southeast instead of northeast. A comparison with the geocache coordinates showed that his latitude was about four miles off. Changing the "33" to a "37" in his GPS, he noted with relief that the arrow now seemed to be pointing in the right direction.
He turned east on Range Road 213 and drove past Duke Field. Coming to the point where the sand roads turned off the dirt road, he stopped and got out to walk the rest of the way. One does not take a Mercury Tracer onto a loose sand road and get away with it. The "sand road" in this case turned out to be a memory of a sand road; it was completely overgrown with tall grass, though thankfully free of trees and other underbrush.
With the glitch in the GPS coordinates, Liberian was navigating to the "X" on the map more than he was to the GPS arrow. The sand roads led him to the place a hundred or so feet from the meetup point where he had to plunge into the brush, and off he went. The brush was quite open and he reached the designated latitude and longitude rather easily. It transpired that the GPS coordinates, after the adjustment of four arc minutes in latitude, were accurate. Liberian found an open patch of sand two feet square, wrote the requisite "XKCD" in it, photographed his GPS for evidence, and drank the celebratory Gator-Aid.
On the way home he stopped and found the "Hider in a Provider" geocache.
Photos
Not worth uploading unless somebody wishes to dispute Liberian's credibility
