2014-05-22 42 -85

Location

Woods behind a residential street, Grand Rapids, MI, USA

Participants

Mcbaneg (talk) (George)
Rebekah

Expedition

Katja (Rebekah's big sister, also an occasional geohasher) graduated from high school today - and the hashpoint was less than a mile north of the school where the graduation ceremony was held, and was directly adjacent to the campus of the daycare Rebekah had attended from ages 2.5 to 5. Once the ceremony was over and Katja had headed off for the post-graduation party, Rebekah and I headed for the hashpoint in our go-to-graduation clothes (except that R. was wearing my blazer because she was cold in her sleeveless dress.) There's a little stream that runs between the daycare campus and the next residential street over, and the hashpoint was in the woods on the residential side just behind the backyard fences. However we didn't want to tromp through people's driveways and yards around dusk, so we parked at the daycare and tried to find our way through the woods. In some places the stream is more of a swamp, and the brush was pretty thick, so even though we had only about 60 m to go it took us maybe 20 minutes to get to the hashpoint. There was a lot of walking along fallen-log bridges and looking carefully for the least-of-evils when choosing foot placements. Finally we came out against the set of backyard fences a few dozen meters north of the hashpoint, and from there north-south travel was quite a bit easier. We both lost a few microliters of blood along the way.

After the proof-screenshot and a couple of attempts at geohasher and hashpoint photos, we decided it wasn't so bad to walk through peoples' driveways, especially since we had spotted a particularly short and convenient exit point at the north terminus of the fencerow. So our return to the car was much shorter and easier than our trek to the hashpoint had been.

The phone camera isn't so good at low-light pics, but I've posted the best we have. I checked the requirements for Formal Attire and it turns out we qualify!

Rebekah demonstrating formal attire technique on a log bridge.
Swamp.
G. at hashpoint.
Grainy StupidGrin.
Proof pic; error was about 6m and the best I saw during the hashdance was about 3.5.