As I pulled up in front of the Minnehaha County Courthouse, I was immediately confronted with the old contradiction that I have always faced: do I photograph the current county courthouse, even though it might be boring and banal? Or do I photograph the old courthouse because it’s more aesthetically pleasing? Or do I focus on the building where the actual business of running the county occurs? In this case, the choice was made difficult because all three of those choices existed in the form of different buildings. Then again, all three of them were there, making things quite a bit easier. I started with the current courthouse. It was alright as such things go, though I did have some questions about its pointed dome. I was wondering if that was a thing here since I had something similar in Parker and, slightly more pointedly, Canton. I don’t usually talk about my photography, primarily because I’m not a good photographer (seriously, everything I know about photography I can distill into five minutes of explanation), but I especially like my photograph of the current courthouse because I managed to capture an image of …
… the old courthouse, which I was much more enamored of. Now that beautiful lady was about as midwestern as a courthouse gets. I had no doubt I would be seeing more of its like once I got back to Missouri and Iowa.
Of course, I am theoretically interested in the administrative centers of county administration, and it was sitting right there as well so trifecta? I don’t care especially for the building, but it is there for everyone’s edification (he said as if courthouses were the draw here).
I took a little extra time while I was in town to pick up some things I didn’t necessarily need caching-wise. South Dakota’s County challenge specifies physical caches, so I had not yet picked up an EarthCache in South Dakota. Where better to get on than the eponymous falls of Sioux Falls themselves?
Unlike Wichita Falls, Sioux Falls doesn’t have to turn theirs on for people. I took some time to read about the falls, then submitted answers and logged the cache. I also took a few extra minutes to get a Virtual that was there as well.
Since I needed a physical cache, I went ahead and grabbed one while I was there, one by the falls that had been placed in memory of a Webcam Cache that used to be in the park. Inveni, inscripsi, reposui. Looking at the time, I realized that I had burned too much time wandering around the falls, but you know something? What’s even the point of all this running around if you’re not going to see the wonders of the world sometimes? Yet it was time to move on. The day would soon continue for me in…
Geocaching While Black 