After the courthouse disappointment at the end of the day before, I was not looking forward to the offerings of Minnesota. However, despite getting started half an hour late (really a couple of hours late, but that’s a different issue) and managing to fail getting a cache on the way into town, this gorgeous piece of Romanesque Revival made it all worth it, giving me hoe that I had misjudged Minnesota (at least from a courthouse perspective, that is). I wished it had been open because the great glass windows of the tower called out to me to climb up inside and take in the landscape from above. As an architectural note, the courthouse is actually a specific style of Romanesque Revival pioneered by a specific architect, a melange of romanesque features from different countries, distinct enough to have a specific name. Thinking back, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that I had seen other examples, but I didn’t know enough to recognize such a specific difference. To be fair, I still don’t, but I guess I’ve learned something by this point.
The cache was relatively simple and to the point, a locked utility box attached to a telephone pole. The hardest part was getting the lock off, though nowhere near as difficult as back in Cavalier. These were the kinds of caches I need when I’m out on the road! I even left some swag behind to join the little treasures (not to be confused with Treasures) contained therein. Once I had finished with it, I left in a good mood, prepared to face the new day, even if I was already running behind. You see, as I mentioned before, this was a particularly auspicious cache in that it represented thirty percent completion of my Great Project. Yes, I’ve cached in 30% of the counties in the United States (technically more since there are some counties I don’t count) and I have no intention of stopping now! Especially since I was on the way to…
Hold up a second. When I was discussing Ortonville, I mentioned that I would pay a price for going there. Now was the time for the price to come due. You see, when I planned my route, I had made it so that I had about thirty minutes to a hour to drive from one county seat to the next. That way I wouldn’t spend so much valuable daylight in transit. Except I deviated from the plan a couple of days before and grabbed a couple of counties that were so close I could taste them. As I got on the King of Trails heading south from Ada, I soon came to realize that I recognized stretches because I had driven them before. I cruised past the civic center in Wheaton where I had found a cache and then past the Big Stone County Courthouse. When I grabbed caches there before, I thought that I might be taking some work off my plate for this day. Instead, I drove three hours straight from Ada, burning valuable daylight, covering ground I didn’t need to because I wouldn’t stick to the plan. Who knows? I may have slipped in a new county or two days before if I had stuck with it. The plan exists for a reason and if I don’t have to change it (like I did back during the Debacle of Arizona), there’s no reason I should deviate from it. I need to trust past me’s planning decisions so future me won’t have to suffer the consequences. But suffer them I did, all the way to…
Geocaching While Black 