trespassing

For our final in my field methods class we had another orienteering-type activity, where we were given GPS coordinates and pictures, and we had to find the thing in the picture and take strike/dip or trend/plunge, then plot it on a topographic map. Ryan and the kids came with me in the evening while I tried to find the first few places.

It was all going just fine for the first place (by the pond). Then I went to move on to the second place. Something strange happened in my brain as I was walking there, and I started thinking the top number on the GPS was the northing and the bottom was easting (it's actually the opposite). I don't know how that happened, because I was thinking the right way for the first location. I was about three yards away from the second place when my brain flipped and I started thinking I needed to be going a completely different direction. We ended up at a fence, and (in my flip-flopped thought process) my GPS was saying I needed to be on the other side of the fence. We went up and down the fence and couldn't find a place where it seemed to curve around. Ryan remarked that it seemed more like a deer fence, so finally I decided to climb over this gate and find my place on the other side. I left Ryan and the kids there. Kevin and Heidi apparently tried to follow me to get me to come back. Apparently they knew this was a bad idea.

I kept wandering and trying to get the GPS numbers right, and I ended up at a road. I followed the road and came to a brick building with a parking lot to the side. Then I realized the brick building looked sort of like a house, and someone was looking at me out the window. I turned and went around the house that definitely had a bunch of fences around it. After wandering for quite a distance I finally decided my GPS was having problems and I needed to go back, but by this point I had decided that this was definitely somebody's private property, so I didn't really want to go back past the house. I ended up getting disoriented, and then I found a broken part in the fence and went over. I was pretty obviously back on the frisbee golf course now, and I asked somebody to tell me how to get back to the pond, figuring if I could get back to the pond I could find Ryan and the kids.

I got back and found them, and by that point it was time to go home. I was really frustrated because I had to give the GPS back to my TA by 2:00 the next day, and I only had one out of the ten locations done.

Here's an interesting leaf Ryan saw while I was tromping through the forest.

The next day I went back to try again. I walked quite a ways and again decided my GPS must be having problems because I would walk in a straight line north (following my compass) and the numbers on the GPS for what I thought were northing would go up and down and up and down. That was when it finally hit me that I had flipped it in my head, and that really the top number was easting and the bottom number was northing. After that I got along much better. I found the places just fine and didn't have much trouble figuring out where they were on the topo map. The only issue I had was with the fourth place. I ended up standing at that same fence with the GPS telling me the spot I was looking for was about twenty feet away on the other side of the fence. I looked around on the not-private side of the fence and couldn't find the place in the picture. This time I decided there was no way I was climbing that fence again and I was just going to miss out on the points. (It turns out that was a good choice because when I mentioned it to my TA he said it wasn't on the other side of the fence.) Oh, and the whole time it was sprinkling just slightly so that my topo map was slightly damp, which meant if I tried to erase things I just got smudges.

Later on, after finals were over and grades were posted, I decided to figure out what that building was that I had seen in the evening when I hopped over the fence. As it turns out, it was the UNC chancellor's house. No joke. It was a pretty interesting adventure. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't a test.