2015 Tombstone Trail

A nearly full moon and great fall weather provided an excellent evening for the 42 cars that competed on the 2015 Tombstone Trail, the 38th consecutive year for the event. The event started in Hudson, WI and ran through the cemeteries of western St. Croix County, ending at the Village Inn in North Hudson, one of the best ending points we have ever used.

In 2014 we covered most of St. Croix County. This year we dropped most of the eastern cemeteries and added a few of the western ones that we had skipped last year. The event was similar to what we've been running recently, a scavenger hunt where the more interesting the cemetery, the more points to be had. As always, the more points, the more difficult, and as usual there were some questions that required pretty astute observation to answer correctly.

One cemetery had 5 questions that were used as a tiebreaker. With 42 cars scoring generally less than 30 points, there are guaranteed to be ties, so getting those 5 questions right was all but required to win. Though all 5 questions could be answered without even leaving your car, contestants didn't know that, so there was a lot to cover in the dark to find the answers.

Winners Graham Smith and Brandon Tighe had the best tiebreaker score, but didn't need it, dominating the field and class A with 31 points, 6 points ahead of the third place team. 2 points behind, and clear winners had Smith and Tighe failed, were Jerome and Jessica Porter, 2nd overall and 2nd in class A.

3rd overall and 1st in class AA were John Knauss and Jillian Odland with 25 points. 4th overall and 1st in class G were Clarence and Kate Westberg, who ran the very first Tombstone Trail in 1978, along with Sue Iverson, who competed this year with her daughter and grandaughter. Still coming back after 38 years! Absent was the event's most experienced contestant, Kerry Freund, who has run 35 of the 38 events, and hadn't missed one since the early 80's. We missed you, Kerry.

5th and 6th overall went to another pair of AA cars, Ryan Hammond/Preston Jordan and Lisa Baker/Travis Achman with 23 and 22 points, respectively. 7th overall were our class B winners, Jerry Roper and Karen Gillen, also with 22 points, but losing the tiebreaker with Baker/Achman.

Matthew Lipinski and Molly Rutledge killed the class D field for teams runnning their first Tombstone Trail with 20 points. Their 2nd best tiebreaker in a 6-way tie left them in 10th overall, too!

The closest battle of the night was in class C, where Michele and Andy Stromgren edged out Anthony Bessel and Jennifer Francomb for 1st in class and 12th overall. We had to go to the fourth tiebreaker to determine Stromgrens the winners.

The coveted "dead last" award was also a close one, with Garrett Johnson and Joey Doyle losing (winning?) the second tiebreaker with Sue Iverson and Jessica Trygstad. The "best costomb" awards went to Maria Alderink's can of Spam, Lexi Anderson's bottle of ketchup, and Mary and Mark Utecht's Scooby Doo Gang.

The hardest question of the evening was most certainly a surprise to me. It wasn't even the question I thought was the hardest at the old Irish cemetery, counting the shamrocks on the gate and its columns. You had to notice the shamrocks on the gates and on the two big plaques on the two columns, and oh, yes, the small plaque on one of the columns, to get it right. Oh, and the two more plaques on the back sides of the columns. However, most of the 23 teams who answered wrong seem to have also counted the 4 shamrocks that weren't on the gate, but were on the surrounding fence.

19 teams also surprised us at the Kinnickinnic cemetery by failing to find the person buried closest to "any" gate. Rather than the three front gates, the closest gate was that to the large family plot right in front of the main entrance.

What I thought was the most difficult question was finding the couple who celebrated their 57th anniversary together this year. There were three couples married in 1958 with markers in that small cemetery, but only one of the couples could have celebrated their anniversary together this year, since they are both still alive. 14 teams missed that one.

Finally, 11 teams failed to notice a tombstone where "Schultz" was misspelled "Shultz".

Thanks to Vicki Larson and Gary Starr for helping set up the course, and to Breon and Amanda Nagy for prechecking it. Thanks also to Alexis Anderson, JB and Brenda Lewis, and Sharon Bringen for working registration and scoring. They had the scoring done within 5 minutes of the last car's arrival at the end point.

Watch for the 2016 Tombstone Trail to be run out of Cannon Falls, MN on October 29.

Mark Larson
Rallymaster

You can see the event results here.

Read the 2014 report.