768. Spokane, Spokane County (WA33)

Holy crap!  Now that is one heck of a courthouse!  It’s less of a courthouse and more of a castle!  I couldn’t be absolutely sure at that moment because I hadn’t yet finished my county tour of Washington, but I already felt little doubt that this would be the best courthouse I would see on this trip.  Please don’t get me wrong: I saw some that I really liked, but nothing on this level.  In fact, I would have to say this is one of the best ones I’ve ever seen.  I’d have to go back through the archives to be entirely sure, but I’ll go ahead and say it: I think this one is easily in the top ten.  Of course, backing that up would necessitate making an actual top ten list, but that’s an exercise for later.  Of course, if I extended that logic, I would also need a bottom ten list, and I’m not ready to crack that nut. 

All that said, Future Arborists of America, attend!  This amazing building has the most excellent corner tower spires, but I can’t document them for crap because the trees are so tragically placed.  So many features are obscured that I almost wish I had taken some courtroom art classes so I could draw the building instead.  Ill-considered arboreal placement can be a pox on the photos taken for future generations!

While I like Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson, I have to admit that Benny & Joon has never been high on my list of favorite movies (if you ever catch me in real life, ask me about my favorite movies—I definitely have that top ten list prepared and ready to go).  It’s certainly a good movie with a Murderers’ Row of supporting talent, but I’m not one of its many cult fans.  I especially didn’t know that it had been filmed in Spokane.  What does any of this have to do with anything?  The most favorited cache in the area turned out to be at a filming location for the movie!  That alone merited many of the favorite points, but then I got to the cache and saw where the rest of them came from.  Yes, that’s a Little Free Library.  It is also a gadget cache and one of the best caches I’ve seen in the state.  I don’t know for sure if it is in my lifetime’s top ten, but I bet it’s in the top twenty.  I’m not going to say anything about this one because I don’t want to spoil it for you, but that was one heck of a cache.  It legit earned one of my stingily hoarded favorite points.  No joke.  I will say this: you probably want a third hand for this one.  It’s not hard, but it would have been a lot harder without Buckandi’s help. 

My work here was done, so it was time to set off again.  If I had been traveling alone, I would have popped over into Idaho to hit Coeur d’Alene and, eventually, dip a toe in Montana.  On the other hand, I would have been doing a lot of night driving and burning myself out over the trip.  This was a marathon, though, not a sprint.  I’ll be back in Idaho, so that could wait.  What could not wait was getting to…