2013-03-03 43 -117

Sun 3 Mar 2013 in 43,-117: 43.0160004, -117.1443803 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

Northwest of Jordan Valley, OR

Participants

• Eldin
• Pojana

Expedition

My wife and I were sitting around on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Being somewhat bored, and it being a perfect day for a drive in the country, I decided to look to see if the hashpoints in any nearby graticules looked promising. Both this one (one graticule west of my home graticule) and 43,-115 (one graticule east of home) looked likely to be reachable. Of the two, I judged that I'll likely have fewer opportunities to get a hash in this one than the one on the other side, so we set out for an adventure.

The expedition got off to a bit of a rough start as I picked a poor route to travel to the hashpoint, adding about 40 miles to the trip unnecessarially. But aside from taking the scenic route, the trip went smoothly. Until we got to the turn-off that should have gotten us to within relatively easy walking distance. There was a fence across most of the road, and a sign indicating that it was closed to motor traffic.

We were almost 2 miles from the hash at that point, and while I would normally have considered walking it, my wife was not prepared to walk that distance. And we were both uncomfortable with the idea of her waiting in the car for the amount of time it would have taken for me to walk it, with the car being essentially in the middle of nowhere, far out of range of any mobile service. The small bit of map I had printed out before we left didn't show any other promising roads to get near the hash (although looking at maps now that I have internet service again, I can see that there was another approach. And that road was open, at least at the point where it left the highway). So our hopes of reaching the hash point were thwarted.

On the way back (maybe 3 miles from the blocked road), we stopped at a place called Stonehouse Coffee for espresso and ice cream, to console ourselves for having not made it to the coordinates. However, even though the expedition was a failure in terms of reaching the coordinates, it was a success in terms of taking a pleasant drive along a somewhat scenic route on a beautiful day. And as fun was had, the expedition was in some sense successful.

Photos

• 

  Picture of Pojana (the wife) in the car, en-route to the hash.