#2: [27-May-23]

21-May-2000 -- 1710hours (5:10pm)
N43°W93°

Success; a first-time "GO" at collecting a confluence. I grew up about 4.3 miles as the crow flies from this place, and never gave it a thought.

When I found the Confluence web site, I thought it sounded cool and decided to go find one. Conveniently, no one had done this one, so I did.

First things first: find out who owns the ground and get permission! No "discourteously ignoring the "No Trespassing" sign" for me, as someone has recently done; that sounds like a good way to get shot if you ask me.

After a trip to the county courthouse and the Assessor’s Office, I know who to get a hold of and on this sunny Sunday afternoon, I headed out to find him.

I manage to find his son that lives directly across the road from the confluence, and who happens to be the guy that actually works the ground, explain to him what I’m up to, and ask if I can go for a walk. No problem.

I start off across the field with my GPS, camera, a tripod, and my compass (don’t know why I had a compass, just seemed like the thing to do at the time).

After a bit of my wandering around, the GPS starts to settle in. I get to within just a couple of tenths of a second either way, and finally, it just goes to N43°00’00.0" W93°00’00.0", and stops. Dead on.

I take a couple of pictures of the GPS and one of the natives (corn that is all of about 4 inches tall; in 3 months it’ll be well over your head). Since the confluence itself is down in a low spot and you can’t see more than about 100 meters in any direction, I then backed off to a high point to get some pics of the surrounding countryside and of the confluence from a distance.

I wander back to my Jeep and by about 1800 hours (6:00pm), I’m done. All in all, not an uninteresting way to spend part of the afternoon. Think I might do it again.

Only 15 to go in Iowa.