27-May-2001 -- Every Memorial Day weekend I attend a family reunion held on Lake Okoboji in NW Iowa. I live near Milwaukee, WI, and since there are no unvisited confluences near me I decided to visit this one, which is within a half-hour's drive of where we were staying during the weekend. I drove through Spencer (location of my first job as a newspaper reporter 25 years ago ) and proceeded east until I was just west of Dickens. I traveled south on a gravel road for another 1-3/4 miles. The confluence was about 1/3 mile into a farm field. I parked in a farm drive and set off on foot. It was a calm, sunny, and hazy morning. 58 degrees F. The area had received rain for several days so there was plenty of mud beneath the corn stubble from last year's crop. No other humans were in site -- only a prancing whitetail deer, a few cawing crows, and a hawk who came floating by to see what I was up to. After a 15-minute walk into the field the GPS zeroed out. I placed it on the ground to take photos. The nearest buildings were a farmstead about 1/4 mile to the SW. Time: 9:40 a.m. I walked back to my vehicle and snapped a photo of the mud on my boots. Then I set the camera on the hood of the truck to a photo of me standing in the field, with the confluence point behind me.