2009-11-13 40 -89

Location

On the west side of Detroit Avenue near Birchwood Street, across from the downtown water works building and the police station in Morton, Illinois.

Participants

David & Rachel

Plans

I saw that the hashpoint was in a relatively accessable spot in my hometown, and what's more, close to my house (765 meters as the crow flies). I decided to leave work early today so as to make it to the hashpoint at 4:00. The only real planning I needed was to decide whether to take bikes or to walk.

Expedition

After ducking out of work early on Friday (which a lot of my coworkers did as well because, hey, it's Friday), my wife and I hopped on our bikes a bit before 4:00 PM and headed off towards the hashpoint. Less than a mile later, we were there. We went around the back of the police station via Birchwood Park and crossed Detroit Avenue to get to the strip of grass on the west side of the street, where the hashpoint was. The northwest corner of Detroit and Birchwood is actually farmland, but there is a maybe three or four meter wide strip of grass between the field and the road - which is where we needed to be, based on what I could tell from overhead views. There are two driveways across Detroit from the hashpoint; the north one is for the village's downtown water works office, and the south one is the rear entrance to the police station. I estimated that if you divided the space between these two driveways in thirds, the hashpoint was across from the lower third division line (lower meaning more southern). So that's where I tried to put myself, justifying in my mind that I was in some small radius from the true location. We stayed there for not very long, partly because we were very out of place standing at the side of the road there, and partly because it was very chilly out. I wasn't expecting anyone else to meet us out there, so we biked back the way we came.

Photos

Figuring out the route to take
The downtown water tower, as seen from the hashpoint
On the left, the driveway to the water works building...
...and on the right, the police station driveway
Date and time on the cellphone (very blurry but you might be able to make it out)
Proof of location