2011-01-01 38 -104

Sat 1 Jan 2011 in 38,-104: 38.2318223, -104.8856161 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

1468 Newton Rd, Pueblo, CO 81005, USA (38.23182, -104.88562) 42.3 miles away

Participants

• Rolando Marroquin
• Kristin Rapp
• Kayleigh Thiel
• Nathan Powell

Plans

To drive to the hash....

Expedition

It started out as a resolution to geohash once a week for the new year. Nate and Rolando decided to attempt to locate the hash. Nate decided to invite Kayleigh and Kirstin along for some more company. We started out heading south on Powers to catch the I-25 South to Pueblo, but we took a detour, per Rolando's unannounced request. It's been snowing here over the weekend and we're driving a front-wheel drive Dodge Neon. So we found an abandoned road of sorts and Rolando attempts to drift his car. Nonetheless it was fun and entertaining, even getting an inch from the curve when we lost all control...

Since we accomplished that little detour we finally started our drive to Pueblo passing through Fountain on the way. Nothing really interesting happening here so fast forward a bit. We finally get to a nonexistent road (Garmin must have had blind monkeys draw their maps...) so we decided to trek through the snow, ice, and freezing wind to get to the hash. All of us pointed to what we thought was a frozen lake, but that wasn't the case more of a giant crater; Rolando say's "Hey Nate, tell me this is a bad idea," and he starts walking towards the crater. Well, that was a bad idea. He rolls down the crater in the snow becoming covered in snow and mud. Well, we didn't discover what had exactly happened, but more on that later.

So were following the Garmin on the supposed road that doesn't exist to the hash when we ran into a fence. If I remember the rules correctly they state that without permission you cannot trespass onto private property. So we stopped there and stuck an orange cone in the ground with a note stating "People from the Internet were here, Happy Geohashing and Happy New Year."

We started our trek back to the car and when got perhaps a quarter mile away, Rolando had realized he had lost his keys. So Rolando and Nate ran to the car to see if we had left the keys in the car because we didn't remember hitting the lock button on the remote. No luck. So our ingenious ideas started to formulate. We decided to leave the girls behind while we searched for the keys, we had an idea that he might have dropped them when he decided to roll down the hill so that was our first checkpoint. We ran back to the general location of the and luckily found the car keys.

Now we started running back to the car and then things got kind of scary, it's dark and cold and snowy outside and Nate is in moccasins and a sweater and Kayleigh is in heels, not exactly geohashing clothes...

We yelled to locate the car and the girls and eventually we found them. We got back and the girls were sitting on the car... and here is the ensuing dialogue:

Rolando and Nate: "Why are you on the car?" Girls: "There was a coyote about a 100 yards away howling at us." Nate: "Like being on the top of the car would have saved you?" Kirstin: "I'm five foot tall, that coyote would see me as a child."

So, all in all we couldn't reach the hash because it was on private property, Rolando lost his keys because he decided to roll down hill in a crater, and Kirstin almost was food for a wolf... oh the adventures.

Photos

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  Geohashers

Achievements

Nate earned the Drag-along achievement by dragging Rolando, Kirstin, Kayleigh to the (38, -104) geohash on 2011-01-01.

• Land geohash