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the Degree Confluence Project
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United States : Wisconsin

2.1 miles (3.3 km) E of Mattoon, Shawano, WI, USA
Approx. altitude: 383 m (1256 ft)
([?] maps: Google MapQuest OpenStreetMap topo aerial ConfluenceNavigator)
Antipode: 45°S 91°E

Quality: good

Click on any of the images for the full-sized picture.

#2: Group shot at the point. #3: Strange things en route. #4: Welcome to Mattoon! #5: On the road, the point is off to the right.

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  45°N 89°W (visit #1)  

#1: Another view, our tracks leading in are to the right.

(visited by Jason Dostal, Kurt Wege, Noah Rhodes and Leanne Hedrick)

30-Dec-2000 -- My dad gave me a GPS unit that he no longer uses (Magellan GPS 310) for Christmas. I had heard about Geocaching through Slashdot, and one day a message about this project came through on the GPSStash mailing list. So, I took a look at Wisconsin, and saw that there were quite a few confluences that had not yet been explored. There is only one Geocache in Wisconsin, and apparently the stash has been vandalized/removed. This project seemed like a fun game to play while I figured out a few spots for some stashes and waited for other people to place a few in Wisconsin.

So, I figured out the best route to take to this confluence, and got a few friends of mine together to go find it. The trip to the stash was fairly uneventful, until we were about 1.5 miles south of the point. We were driving at about 30 MPH on the road leading to the point, when all of a sudden this person starts backing out of her driveway right in front of us. She never stopped for us, and as we started braking, we slid on the snowy road. She continued backing out of the driveway until we were forced to either head for the ditch or hit her.

So, we took the ditch. In a small Saturn car with three feet of snow in Wisconsin. To top it all off, the woman never stopped, and as my friend jumped out of the drivers seat to run to her car, she sped off! Needless to say, we wrote down her license plate number, and we all worked on digging his car out of the ditch. What's a road trip without some adventure?

After getting out of the ditch, we drove to the confluence point. When we parked on the side of the road where my GPS said it was 90 degrees to the right, we were .02 miles away from the point. It took us about fifteen steps off the side of the road, and we there. We snapped a few pictures, and I went out to the road and back to the point again to make sure we were sure we had found it.

It was my first hunt for a confluence point, and we all had a blast. The only bad thing about this one, was that it was way too easy! We were hoping for more of a hike, but it was still fun. We are already planning our next hunt!


 All pictures
#1: Another view, our tracks leading in are to the right.
#2: Group shot at the point.
#3: Strange things en route.
#4: Welcome to Mattoon!
#5: On the road, the point is off to the right.
#6: Mattoon water tower, visible from the road.
ALL: All pictures on one page