2024-09-15 41 -87
| Sun 15 Sep 2024 in 41,-87: 41.9435660, -87.9466165 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
In a parking lot for White Pines Golf Club in Bensenville.
Participants
Expedition
I sort of backed into doing this one, funnily enough.
When I saw the location on Friday, I liked the idea, but I knew I had plans to go to the Paramount Theatre in Aurora for the matinee that day, and the two are in pretty much opposite directions from my house. We'd have some time after the play, sure, but we'd need to eat and we had a trivia Zoom call this evening and were we really going to fit in something so out of the way? I figured the answer was probably not, and made peace with that.
My parents and I saw the play. (The Full Monty... enough said. Well, I'll say one more bit: the Paramount always does put on a good play.) And then we sat in the car figuring out where to eat. Our usual place had outdoor seating only, and it was a bit warm for that (in the high 80s Fahrenheit in mid-September!), so we were trying to figure out a plan B, and to complicate matters further the Internet wasn't cooperating when I tried to look up restaurants along the way...
It was my father, not myself, who brought up the possibility of going to the hashpoint and then figuring out the food options from there.
I was a little worried about the point's actual accessibility, especially without having to shell out some cash for an Admit One achievement, but I needn't have worried. While there might well have been a fee for actually golfing, just driving into the golf course parking lot was free and open to all. We got within about 25 meters just driving through the parking lot getting our bearings on where the hashpoint was located, and then I got out of the car and reached it easily on foot.
The hashpoint itself was right on the edge between the parking lot aisle and a decent parking spot, and there were definitely a fair few people out there taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to get some golf in; I have to wonder how many golfers there might have reached the hashpoint that day without even knowing it.
Getting a few pictures in didn't take long, and neither did finding a restaurant with good reviews not even a five minutes' drive away, where we all had a good meal. We even had time to stop at a grocery store and grab a few one-day-only deals before that trivia Zoom call in the evening. Which our team won, as it happens.
Sometimes these things just work out.
