2013-02-26 40 -111

2013-02-26 40 -111: Meet Me in Mapleton

My first foray into Geohashing; my success is up for debate.

Tue 26 Feb 2013 in 40,-111: 40.1285223, -111.5739441 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

This hash was on a long driveway leading up to a farm house in Mapleton, UT.

Participants

Me and my four children, all under the age of 6, who were happy to go for a night-time drive with daddy.

Plans

As a compulsory hashpoint checker, it was a serendipitous combination that greeted me that day. My wife, who has historically expressed disinterest in going for a drive to reach a geohash, was attending book group. I would be in charge of watching the kids, and it was entirely up to me what we would do. The hash was within easy driving distance--I probably wouldn't even have to get out of the car! I felt like the stars had aligned to make this hash happen.

Expedition

We hit the road after dinner - the kids were all buckled into their car seats, and I had the hash coordinates entered into my iPod touch, which, at that time, I believed to hold a GPS chip. I've since learned that it is an internet-based location service that crowd-sources its connection from surrounding internet sources - whatever that means. Had I known this at the time, I would have brought our mobile hotspot, which may have led to a more definitive conclusion to the outing.

It seemed an easy start to an illustrious geohashing career, and though I'd never been to Mapleton before, I'd studied the maps enough to be confident in my directions.

The first hiccup occurred when we reached south Springville. It was already dark, since in February the sun basically sets at 4:00 pm. I saw signage telling me State Street veered off to the right, but I knew I wanted to continue south. Much to my dismay, State was my desired route, and continuing south took me underneath it and onto a rural highway that was taking me farther west into the darkness. It was about this time that I also noticed that my GPS app was not tracking my location for some reason, and the glowing blue dot said I was still in Orem. Since I couldn't get the app to load the map of my current location, I flipped a u-ey on the dark highway and headed back to town, turned around again, and took the correct turn onto State.

I was disheartened by my iPod's unresponsiveness, and kept checking it to see what I could do to get it to catch up to me. As I headed into Mapleton, it must have found some kind of signal again, because it began to show a more accurate location.

From the satellite image, I had known that the driveway was fenced, but I was surprised when I reached my turn to see it was a tall white vinyl fence, taller than my mini-van even. The drive was narrowed considerably by piles of snow to either side. It was too narrow to turn around in. I admit that I hesitated at this point, before continuing.

The kids were sobered a little bit at this point, the unfamiliar road, the high fences on either side illuminated only by the headlights. I put on a cheerful face to counteract how spooked they seemed to be.

Now, this is where the iPod let me down again, as you can see from the pictures (once I upload them), I couldn't get it to keep up with me. I was so close, and yet seemingly so far! I got out of the van and walked up and down the road in either direction, hoping for the device to keep up, but it persisted in saying that I was back on the road or near the road, and I couldn't get it to reflect my location. I was tempted to try hopping the fence, but it was tall, and the kids would be even more nervous, and I didn't know what was on the other side - it could have been a bull's pasture for all I knew!

After I'd covered enough ground to be sure I'd passed within a few feet of the point, I snapped a few shots of my progress and then relinquished the quest for the night.

We drove to the end of the drive where there was a circular turn-around that took us right by the farmhouse, whose residents were no doubt curious as to our intent. We drove home without further incident, the kids jabbering about the spooky road all the way back.