2014 Tombstone Trail

The first Tombstone Trail ever to run in Wisconsin sold out with weeks to go, but a couple cancellations made room for some on the waiting list to run the event. We printed a couple extra sets of instructions, so we were able to offer a spot to everyone who missed out. With a late cancellation and a couple no-shows, we started 41 cars from Hudson, WI.

Being the first year in St. Croix County, we scoured the Internet to find almost 50 cemeteries. After visiting them all we trimmed it down to 23 cemeteries for the initial event. Last year being probably the most difficult Tombstone Trail ever, we eased up on the difficulty a little, the emphasis being on choosing the best route to victory. The format followed the trend of recent years, where most cemeteries had a multiple number of questions to answer, with single questions being fairly easy, and multiple questions getting harder.

Accuracy was the key to success, with wrong answers being deducted from your score, meaning one wrong answer made a swing of two points. The trophy winners tended to be the teams with the fewest wrong answers.

The most accurate team, though, finished out of the trophies. Derek Atkinson and Krista Ceason answered 22 questions with no mistakes. Next best were 9 teams with only 2 errors each, including overall winners Nate and Lori Austin with 33 right and 2 wrong.

The least accurate team was the team of Ted Loucks and Joshua Christensen, who answered 24 questions correctly and forgot about wrong answers being deducted. They guessed at all their unanswered questions and ended up with a total score of -2. They were robbed of the Dead Last trophy by the Max and Bethanie Hinkley, who had a map-reading error that made them 46 minutes late.

A few questions stood out as the most difficult. At the farthest cemetery from Hudson contestants had to find a man's nicknames. Only 2 out of the 27 teams who answered the question noticed that he was called Buckshot on the front of his marker and Bucky on the back.

The most difficult question was clearly at the Kinnickinnic cemetery, where only 1 of 19 caught the misspelled "Kinnickinnick".

One cemetery surprisingly to us gave teams fits with both its 2 questions. First, when asked about the number of standing statues, many failed to notice that one of the three was kneeling. Second, noting that MacNamara was spelled "McNamara" caught a large number.

Another question which gave a lot of teams trouble was about a woman buried next to a family plot with a different last name than the rest of the family. Finally, many teams obviously guessed at the words on a sign rather than going there. The correct answer for "Building grounds and ______________ are tobacco free" was vehicles, not common areas.

Along with the overall win, Austins took home the class A trophy by winning a tiebreaker from Christopher Spargo and Jamie Wanken, who was running his first Tombstone Trail. Other class winners were Lisa Baker and Travis Achman in 3rd overall, Ryan Hammod and Preston Jordan in 4th overall, Jim Anderson and Clark Pancsh in 7th overall, Dave Huber and Shannon Huber in 19th overall, and Michele Stromgren and Andy Stromgren in 20th overall. For teams ran just for fun in the unscored Class 0.

The Best Costomb award went to Rachel Larson and Ashley Reiter for their Zombie Scarecrows, narrowly beating out Greg and Deb Stromgren as Ceasar and Cleopatra. Honorable mention went to Gabe Johnston and Leann Frydtych for their innovative Google Map Points.

The Village Inn was a great end point, seating all of us comfortably. That made it easy for us to decide to bring the 2015 Tombstone Trail back to Wisconsin!

Thanks to my wife Vicki Larson, my grandaughter Lexi Anderson and my friend Gary Starr for helping me find all the cemeteries and write the questions. Thanks to Jay and Carol Luehmann for an excellent precheck, and thanks to JB and Brenda Lewis for working registration and scoring. All of you made the inaugural Wisconsin Tombstone Trail a big success.

Mark Larson
Rallymaster

You can see the event results here.

Read the 2013 report.