#2: [14-Jul-04]

17-Jul-2001 -- The confluence was in the middle of a flat steppe area, about 2km from a road. The driver was quite interested in the GPS, and was intrigued with going to the "map cross" as he referred to it. As we started our three day journey, my daughter explained about the confluence in Mongolian. Although he didn't carry a map, the driver said we would be passing near one of the points. He pointed to the 44/104 lines on the topo map that I had. Occasionally, I would check the "nearest waypoints" page on my Garmin eTrex, where I had keyed in wapoints at each of the confluences that were near our route. When we were about 25km from the confluence, the driver suggested that we were getting close... But he had no reference, other than the standard Mongolian routine of staring at the mountains in the distance. We were in fairly mountainous terrain at the time, and I had decided that I wasn't all _that_ interested in going to the point. We had passed within 25-30km of other points. But with about 5km to go, we left the mountains and were on high steppes, flat land. As we drove down the road, the GPS indicated the point was at a right angle to the road, about 2km north of the road. The driver turned and drove directly toward the spot. We overshot by a bit, and walked until the GPS arrow was flitting around.

I stopped with the display at 44.00000 103.00000 and piled a few rocks together. The closeup photo shows that the GPS drifted to 102.99995, indicating 5.40 meters off the confluence.

The general photo shows me with arms outstreched along the N44 line, with the camera pointed magenetic north. (I just realized that the compass was moved between the two photos.)

I didn't capture a panorama, although one could just duplicate the one picture I provided. There isn't much scenery change ;-), and it's a little far to go back for a new photo shoot.