#6: [18-Mar-06]

#5: [05-Mar-06]

#4: [26-Nov-04]

#3: [19-Mar-04]

#1: [07-Jul-00] (incomplete)

06-Jan-2001 -- This visit falls under the "great coincidences" category. I heard about this project on Friday, and looked to see which confluences had been successfully visited in my area. What were the odds that I would be driving within a mile of the single attempted visit within 250 miles?

I checked the pending list, dashed off an email that I was going for it, and got the aerial and topo information. Thanks to Karl, Kathy and Joe who had visited earlier, I thought it would be very easy to find. All I had to do was get there before dark.

So I left home (Taneytown, MD - 39.66N 77.16W) at 5 a.m. to go to an auction up in Phoenixville, PA. It had snowed the day before, and everything was beautiful as the sun came up. I kept an eye on the clock through the auction, which ended at 2:30, giving me a good bit of time to find the confluence. I set out toward Gap, PA, in good spirits.

My one hesitation was that I would find that the farm where the confluence was located might be Amish, and how I might give an explanation of the project while asking permission. As it turned out, there were cars in the driveway, so that was no worry. Thanks to the aerial map, I was able to ask permission to "walk up to the corner of the woods and take a few photos," and was allowed to do so.

So I walked up some tractor ruts until I was at 40N, then cut across a corn row until I was at 76W. After letting the GPS average out, I took some pictures looking southwest (#1) and south (#2), a shot of the GPS (#3) and had a little fun (#4). I went down to the road and tried to get a similar photo to Karl's (#5). After several tries, I finally got the camera timer to work, and took my own picture (#6) but you can see I was cold and unhappy at that point. (This is the only photo of me wearing that hat, and I did not wear it when asking permission to go on the property.)

All in all, it was a very easy visit, set up by the work of the previous visitors, and timely in many ways.