595. Liberty, Clay County (MO005)

Lovely courthouse, don’t you agree?  They call it an administration building, but in this case it’s all the same to me, especially when the administration building has “court house” carved on it.  This was another one of those confusing courthouses.  I couldn’t figure out where the front was because the flagpole, instead of being out front, was on top of the building.  That one might be a first, but somehow I wouldn’t bet on it.  More than likely, I’ve run into it before and just had no reason to take note of it since the front of the building was obvious.  I also ran into something else I haven’t seen in a long time, teenagers at a coffee shop, sitting around talking and laughing as teenagers do (or at least did when I was one).  That’s been a rare thing to find these days, but as the Time of Cholera seems to recede a little (though not nearly enough) hope springs eternal that such things will return.

The cache led to an interesting location, the James Museum.  Here on the grounds is the birthplace of Frank and Jesse James.  This is also where they often hid out with their sister before Jesse James was murdered by the so-called coward Robert Ford.  It also sat atop a stack of virtuals and a multi, all of which requiring coordinate corrections for their locations that could only be found here.  Had I world enough and time, I would have done them all.  But they were spread out all over the county so that wasn’t in the cards.  I did the virtual at the museum, but I went ahead and solved a couple of the others and decided to do one of them.  The multi was on my way out of town anyway, so why not?  And the location it teased couldn’t be passed up.  I headed back towards town to go get it.

Just like before, there’s always a cemetery.  Unlike before, there was little pomp to its most famous resident.  Ladies and gentlemen (or however you identify—I don’t mean to be gender assumptive), I give you the grave of Jesse James.  While it was sort of what I came here for, it wasn’t entirely what I came here for.  In a nearby cedar…

…I found a little hanging redirector.  I corrected my coordinates again, leading to a tree just outside the cemetery and voila!  The terrain should have been a hair higher on this one, but I’m not going to quibble.  I consider this my official cache for the county because of course I do, and with its signature and return, I was off again.  I had been to James’ birthplace and grave so the circle was now complete.  All that remained was to continue onward to nearby…