41. Menard, Menard County

The first thing that struck me about this courthouse is that it doesn’t have a traditional square.  Most courthouse squares have a gazebo or monuments or something that’s lush and suitably civic.  This one was dying and had a somewhat questionable playground.  Even more importantly, the cell connection, again, was terrible.  So the second I tried to get a cache, I had a heck of a problem.  You can’t pull up a cache when you don’t have a connection.  

Problem is that the place is pretty small so there aren’t a lot of places to find access.  But you can always count on the local library to have it.  The good news is that it was close.  The bad news is that the courthouse clerk and the ladies in the other office I popped into on the way all gave me terrible directions so it took me forever to find the place.  Even when I found the place and connected to the Intertubes, it was kind of craptastic.  The worst part is that this all took a bit over an hour, which is way, waaaaay more time that I intended to spend.  The day was getting later than I’d intended.  That, and the fact that there are only two caches in town (both in cemeteries).  

I went to the first cemetery and I searched but did not find.  What the heck?  It’s a cemetery cache!  A 1.5/1.5!  How can it be that hard?  I double checked and guess what?  It was placed by That Guy!  So apparently he has been seeding them all around the area, and nobody finds them very often because they’re so far out.  I don’t want to DNF them because I didn’t spend a lot of time looking, and it’s possible I’m just not getting his hide style.  This has happened to me before.  The other cemetery wasn’t hidden by him so I headed to it.  This cemetery was a Catholic graveyard that fallen into ruin.  There was little left but stone piles and overgrowth.  But there was a pill bottle under a rock pile that was not at all unusual here.  Sad place to see, but time was not with me.  I sign, replaced, and set off for…