2012-10-12 43 -89

Location

Farmland northwest of Lake Mendota, near Governor Nelson State Park

Participants

Plans

SwensonJ is driving to Madison for a 3:00 appointment. He'll try to swing by the hash on the way there, sometime in the early afternoon.

Expedition

This was a vacation day at our school, but I was on the road to give a presentation at Madison College. The hashpoint is about a 15-minute drive from the campus, which is over an hour from home, so a visit to the hash was definitely in order.

It was a beautiful day to drive; the temperature was about (50 F / 10 C), and the trees were changing colors. After a quick shopping detour, I headed north around Lake Mendota. The farmers were out in the field; they clearly thought I was an idiot, but a harmless one, and gave me permission to walk across their land for a few minutes.

Luckily, the camera batteries died only after I'd gotten the GPS proof photo. There were extras in the car, but I was in a hurry by this time. I got back on the road about 2:15 p.m., and headed for my appointment. My route took me right past the entrance to Governor Nelson State Park -- and then past a gas station. I stopped to change into clean jeans -- and they had squishies! The gas station was Trader Gus, at (43.150941, -89.414291), a distance of just under 4km from the hash. The brand name was Alligator Ice: I got blue raspberry flavor.

I got to Madison College at about 3 p.m. and gave my talk. If anyone happens to like puzzles, I talked about properties of sequences like (3, 13, 1113, 3113, 132113, 1113122113, ...), and they made a video: it is, or will someday be, available here.

Photos

The tractor driver gave me permission to journey on
View from parking place across the hashpoint
I got there!
A hash one mile to the east would have been more fun (and earned the Admit One Geohash achievement)
Cheers!
Madison College, main entrance