As I pulled into Milbank, I could see fireworks popping off in one direction and massive thunderheads with lightning sparking inside them like gods bickering in the other. I was worried about storms starting during the night (weather reports had stated there would be rain along my route), so I was quite sure Grant County would be my last stop for the day. As I pulled up to the courthouse, I was rewarded with another excellently classical chonker of a building. I have on many occasions said that I wanted to create some kind of classification system for all the courthouses I had visited, but I sometimes think that I want to find a way to determine and show how certain types of courthouses correlate to the economic health of a county. I’m not entirely sure what someone would do with that kind of data or if it (or even how) it would be useful. But that was a question for another day. I had photography to do as night descended like the cloak of a brooding god.
I had been able to put the slowly darkening twilight to good use on the way into town. I pulled off onto a side road to pick up a regular cache and found a field with a memorial to a school that had been there a century before. I would not have gone for this cache in the dark considering its placement in a field of thigh-high grass, but there was just enough light left that I felt safe doing it. Behind the sign was a flatter ground ringed in rocks with a couple of benches and a flagpole. There was also a stone memorial on the ground dedicated to someone and, for a moment, I thought it might be a grave. Once I was confident that it was not, I began my search. Where would one hide something the size of an ammo can around here? Once I looked at the back of the sign, I saw a latch.
It opened to reveal an ammo can. Excellent. Inveni, inscripsi, reposui. And not too soon either. The last wisps of twilight were fading so I hurried off to see the Grant County Courthouse and then call it a day. I had covered 16 counties and had not slept since I got up for work the day before, driving through the night to reach Hebron and begin the journey. I had burned a lot of energy, and I deserved (and needed) some rest. In the parking by the courthouse, I leaned back my seat, put my hat over my eyes, and surrendered to Morpheus.
A few hours later (I never sleep long in a car), I awoke. I felt refreshed and energized again. It was still night, but the earlier I started, the more I could get done the next day. The days were so much longer than I was used to being so far north, but at the end of that day I could look forward to a hotel room, a shower, and a bed. I looked at my itinerary, and knew I had a location already decided on, but I ran into a flaw of both my discipline and my routing. Since I usually plan my travels in smaller legs, I don’t always consider the big picture, especially in regards to my proximity to other places. My planned next location was fifty miles away but another, much later stop was only ten miles off. Surely you couldn’t blame me for deviating from my plan so I could go over to…
Geocaching While Black 