Heightened expectations strike again! I recognized the style (aesthetic, not architectural [though yes, I saw that, too]) of the courthouse, but I suspected that the red rock that had given me enjoyment in the last few counties was in short supply here. It’s a perfectly nice courthouse and all, and brick is good enough, but it can hardly be considered sexy (if one can call a courthouse that [and I have]).
The cache was a micro in a tree next to an avenue of flags that I have no doubt was incredibly popular on the Fourth of July, which at that moment was the day before. But that’s not the most important thing. I mean, yes, a cache is one of the two most important things, but …
… what the heck was this? A castle that was a roller-skating rink? I parked in its lot to get the cache and would have only thought it was an interesting one-off if I hadn’t passed another castle on the way to the courthouse! Once again, just as in Le Mars, my lack of research caught me by surprise. To sum up, a local farm boy founded a company making boating and agricultural machinery, made millions, and decided to make his home a literal castle! And since he was the richest man in town, he went ahead and built other castle-like buildings in town and the city just leaned into it. The newspaper was housed in a castle. I saw a logistics warehouse that was a castle that took up an entire city block. I saw suits of armor at weird places. Unfortunately, I didn’t see most of them while I was walking around, just as I was driving past them. He was also a man of other passions as well. He liked evergreens so he had trees transplanted to the area, going so far as building a specialized machine to uproot larger ones in preparation for transport. He also liked Mutiny on the Bounty enough to have a half scale ship built on the nearby lake near his home. I probably would have diverted to see that! I guess I have to come back to the area some time to catch all this stuff I didn’t see! But until then, I sped by medieval towers as I made my way to…
Geocaching While Black 