Some of our group had a busy Sunday.  Starting around Noon, a GPS training exercise was conducted at Sunset Bay State Park.  It was a lot of fun and all involved learned a great deal about navigating with a GPS unit.  Barbara Jackson, Brett Jackson and Bud Berliner had set out "geocaches" with prizes in them.  All of the "stashes" were located using GPS units --- some set on Lat/Long and some set on UTM.

    After a fun afternoon, we all headed home a bit tired and a little wiser.

 

    So wouldn't you know it, we get a callout around dinner time.  Back into the rigs.  A seventy year old mushroom picker was missing south of the Beaver Hill dump.  As fate would have it, this is the area where we had our mock search in February.  So we had a map available with our GPS road tracking on them from our mock search.  We set up a base station at the deputy's site and stationed radio patrols at each end of the logging road.  A Radio Patrol pickup truck dropped our ground crew off at the missing person's last known location.  The Sheriff's Posse brought in horses to assist.  After several hours, with darkness coming on, our ground team picked up the subject and his dog's tracks.  As the team neared the logging road, the subject appeared at his vehicle, jumped in and roared away.  It was thought by team members that the subject had heard the team calling him, followed them back to the road and being embarrassed at being the subject of a search, skirted around them and reached his truck.  The subject was interviewed by the deputy at his camp site and was in good health if a little chagrined.

        So all is well that ends well and our team agreed that a happy, if somewhat humorous, ending was a fitting way to end a very long Sunday.

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The following is from The World Newspaper Monday, August 22, 2005

Missing man found after search 
 

A man who didn't come back from a mushroom-picking outing when expected turned up several hours late Sunday none the worse for wear, according to a Coos County Sheriff's Office press release.

 

Sheriff's deputies were called to Beaver Hill at about 5:20 p.m. by Belinda Hammon, who said Melvin D. Martin, 70, hadn't returned from mushroom picking at noon as planned.

 

Deputies and Coos County's Search and Rescue team had launched a search when Martin made his way back to his parked truck at about 8:45 p.m.

 

Martin, who was not hurt, explained he had "gotten turned around" and so took longer than planned to make his way back.