22-Mar-2006 --

The Great Adventure – Stage One

- A proposed trip to Mankato, Minnesota to work with three groups named Kids Against Hunger, with Outreach Africa, and Life Tracks which are non profit groups that help disadvantaged groups around the world, sparked my interest in seeing if I could hit a bunch of confluences while on the trip.

After checking GoogleEarth it looked very possible with one minor problem, most would be latitude changes. In this area the distance between latitude change confluences is about 69 miles.

The total round trip was accomplished in 5 days and a total of 11 confluences. Two of the days had 5 confluences visited on each of the days. The trip included 34N 97W, 35N 97W, 36N 97W, 37N 97W, 38N 97W, 44N 94N, 42N 93W, 42N 94W, 41N 94W, 41N 95W, AND 40N 95W.

The Beginning / State One:

Day one starts in Fort Worth, Texas and a drive north on I35 to Marietta, Oklahoma and taking Hwy 32 east to Enville Run Road. I missed it and had to double back to take it north. As I approached the road to the confluence area I thought that the road would be better marked and went past the proper road. Taking the road I though was right soon proved to be the wrong one as the GPS needle moved to a steady East heading. So back tracking again I did locate the proper road and got headed in the right direction.

As I got near I could see the Willis house pictured in the previous visits. As I drove down the long drive way I saw that there was a pickup parked there which meant that I would need to talk to the landowner. At this point I am about 800 feet from the confluence, not close enough to count as a success.

As I approached the front door I noticed the electric fence and the extension cord that led to the power box on the fence. Also there were about 20 head of good looking cattle in the field. Probably meant the fence was “HOT”. Previous visitors would have gotten a real welcome if the fence had been hot during their visit.

After knocking and ringing the bell, no one came to the door. SO, I thought, is this day going to start off with an incomplete? Not giving up that easy I started driving down the driveway to see if there was another way around or over the electric fence. About the time I got to the end of the driveway I saw someone come out of the house. I quickly retraced my steps and the landowner Mr. Willis came to greet me. When I got out of the truck with my GPS he had a big smile and said he knew what I was looking for. He said that he worked nights and was just getting up when he heard a knock.

He then offered to go with me to the confluence, and turn off the fence. He mentioned someone had been there before and he had gotten a GPS and found the confluence. We proceeded to Ground Zero and I took the appropriate pictures. We had a good time talking about GPS and confluence hunting. I then packed up my gear to continue on and he went to do some work in the barn.

Great Adventure Stage One complete. Now on to 35N 97W