2012-04-23 38 -95

Location

In an open field near a dirt road, on the Flint Hills National Wildlife Preserve, near Hartford, Kansas.

Participants

Expedition

I had to set out rather late in the day for this one, as I had to be on campus all day, as usual. Since my first few geohashing attempts had ended in failure, mostly due to private property, I decided that I could not miss an opportunity to finally get to a geohash point on public land. After leaving campus for the day at around 5:00 PM, I went home to get my camera and make a few preparations, and then set off in my car shortly before 6:00. I began by heading southwards on U.S. 59 (as almost all of my geohashing expeditions do) and then met up with I-35 and headed southwest towards the point.

In order to get to the point itself, I had to drive down a number of small gravel roads. I am quickly learning that most of rural Kansas is small gravel roads. For a short distance, my car was chased by a small dog, which I later got to snap a picture of. As I neared the point with anticipation, the road suddenly turned in an unexpected direction and abruptly ended. Curses and drat! Bing Maps has steered me wrong again. It did this once before, when what it thought was a road turned out to actually just be some dude's backyard. Switching to a different GPS app on my phone, and using Google Maps instead, I navigated around the obstruction to the wildlife preserve.

I turned down a small dirt road and looked for a place to park my car. The map showed a loop at the end of the road which I thought might be a parking area, but was actually just sort of a loose opening in the trees. I turned around awkwardly and parked a bit closer to the point, near the bend in the road. I got out of the car with my cell phone/GPS in hand and began wandering around. It didn't take long to find the exact point of the hash, which turned out to be in some thick bushes around a small tree. Since the bushes were teeming with mosquitoes, and I was wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, I didn't feel like wading through the brush. And besides, my GPS told me that I was four meters away from the hash, with an uncertainty of about five meters. Good enough for me! Geohash achieved! I snapped a few pictures of the screen as proof, and also of the surrounding area.

I headed back to my car and drove off. On the way back, I came across the same dog as before, and decided to try and get a picture. As I stopped my car, the dog stopped and sat nicely on the side of the road, posing for his picture. I also stopped to try and get a picture of the sunset, but my photography skills are poor and my camera is not very high quality. With that, I headed home for the night, satisfied with my successful adventure.