2020 Tombstone Trail

The 2020 Tombstone Trail was a strange one by traditional measures. The worldwide COVID-19 outbreak ushered in lots of rules intended to fight the spread of the virus. Because of the limitations on gathering in groups, rallymaster Liz Westberg implemented some changes to keep the event in line with accepted standards. First, all registration was done online. General instructions and maps were emailed the day before, with no gathering before the event. Likewise, there was no meeting place at the end. All scoring and results were handled remotely. Teams were spread out over the entire day to minimize contact on the course, and the time allowed to run the event was greatly increased to keep people spread out. Additionally, this was the first time ever we started the event with snow on the ground. The county was hit hard the previous Monday with the earliest snowstorm of that size on record, and by Saturday 2 or 3 inches of crusty, frozen snow covered the ground.

25 teams registered for the event, divided into two groups: daywalkers and nightcrawlers. With no official start time, all daywalkers were sent their instructions and 7:00 AM, with the nightcrawlers starting at 5:00 PM. We were given several hours to run the course at our leisure, submitting our scores via an internet form when we got back into cell phone range.

Vicki and I chose to run as nightcrawlers. Since some cemeteries were not available after sunset at 6:10 PM, we ate at Perkins and were logged onto the internet when our instructions arrived at 5:00. We took a few minutes to check them out, then headed for the cemteries. Our plan was to pick up the 5 closest "daytime only" cemeteries before 6:10, then head out of town for the remainder of the night. Our loop would take us east, then south, west and north, ending up (time permitting) in the northwest corner, closest to home. Well, that was the plan.

We were only in our third cemetery when the curfew started at 6:10. The questions were very difficult this year, I'd say among the hardest ever. The first cemetery was huge with 5 questions to answer, and though the second one was very small, we had to find every tombstone within it. We got out of the third cemetery at 6:20 and headed for the country.

The cemeteries this year for the most part were enormous and separated by miles, with lots of quesitons at each one. In the daylight you can scan the cemetery for clues, but at night you pretty much have to walk the entire cemetery to get close enough to see what you need with your flashlights. Three hours into the event, we had answered 23 of the maximum 50 questions, and weren't sure we'd have the patience to finish. But the wind died down after dark, so it was manageable even though the temperatures dropped throughout the night. By the end we were bundled in hats and gloves.

With all the questions we were missing after dark, we were running out of cemeteries. Five hours in, we only had three cemeteries left, with what we believed were 40 correct answers. We talked about packing it in, but since the remaining cemeteries were all more or less on the way home, we decided we'd try them to see how difficult they were. All three were very large, which was disheartening, but we scored 7 more at the first two, leaving us just needing 3 at the final cemetery, which I believe had 7 questions. We chose the three that looked the easiest, and after answering them we headed for town. We took a break at a Speedway station and sat in their parking lot to upload our scores to the database.

My favorite quesiton of the night was a tricky one. We were to find what was etched on a tombstone that indicated what vehicle the person drove. It was easy to find a large tombstone cut in the shape of a Harley-Davidson logo, with the Harley orange inlayed in the surface. After watching one other competitor write down his answer, I walked around to the back of the marker to find a semi tractor-trailer etched on the back. Bingo!

20 teams submitted their scores and were included in the results. For the first time in four years, Michelle and Andy Stromgren were not the winners. Instead, former class A winners John Knauss and Jillian Odland took top honors in class and overall. Vicki and I won the GPS class, with Rolf and Miriam Strand taking the day. The night group also ran classes B and C, with class winners Chris and Carson Tadevich, and Tracy Thoren and Cora Lutz, respectively.

It was weird not meeting at an endpoint for refreshment and rally stories. I had lots of friends competing out there, but I saw only a few of them due to us being so far spread out. I'm sure we all are hoping that we can get back to normal soon.

Thanks, Liz, for your hard work and innovation making this another successful event. See you next year!

Mark Larson

You can see the event results here.

Read the 2019 report.