14-Feb-2004 -- Mike and I decided, with nothing much else to do that afternoon, to head over to the nearest confluence and check it out, we figured that it would only be an hour or so away. This would prove to be quite a low estimate. First of all, my digital camera wasn’t working at all, it kept beeping and flashing the unintelligible message, “PRO,” so we had to stop by my parents’ house to borrow a functional one, and fortunately that was on the way, but my dad was sick and so I had to spend at least half an hour helping him out.

Once we finally got under way, we hit some nasty traffic almost immediately, which probably set us back another half an hour, but eventually things cleared up and we really flew down the roads. We got near the confluence as dusk was approaching, but there was just enough light to make our way to what looked to be the right field for our target. However, we crossed the entire field, and came up to a line of trees and realized that we weren’t anywhere close to it, so we had to get back in the car and drive around to another approach. This time we were certain it was the right field, and so it was just a walk of half a mile across the fields to the destination.

On the fields where we found the confluence, we saw several old ramshackle farmhouses, and plenty of the local fauna. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted my pictures of the latter while trying to take a picture of our GPS readout. By the time we figured out the camera, it was sunset, and I’ve posted a very nice picture of one of the abandoned farmhouses silhouetted against it. On the way back, even though it was dark out, we were determined to take a photo of a curious sign we had seen on the way in. The “Snead’s Asparagus Farm” seemed to only be growing Christmas trees. The entire background of the picture I’ve posted was a bunch of little foot-tall saplings, but it didn’t come out very well.