The final courthouse of the trip was not what I would call impressive. It’s suitably big and obviously new, but it just didn’t have that certain (for lack of a better term) flair or gravitas or je ne sais quoi that I might have hoped for. But while it wasn’t terrible, I caught a glimpse of the previous courthouse from the photo on a historical marker, and it was so much more lovely. I’m sure there was a good reason they replaced it (probably because it was much, much smaller) so maybe I’ll just let it go.
For the final cache, well, there’s always a cemetery. The Tuscumbia Cemetery was just up the road from the courthouse, easy enough to pull into. All we knew about the cache was that it was tree related. We spent the first few minutes examining a three foot diameter stump that turned out to be the wrong place. It was in fact a camo pill bottle in a nook of another nearby but quite living tree. Invenimus, inscripsimus, reposuimus.
And that was it. We were done. Once again, we were on the road until we got back to my daughter’s dorm. After some time hanging around, enjoying not driving for a bit, we said our goodbyes and I left her behind, bound for home. I ended up driving through the night and arriving back home at an unexpected time of the morning, early enough to attend an Event later that day. And when my bed called that evening, I answered it. I had seen wonders over the course of a few days. The most wondrous thing, of course, was my daughter. And the next most wondrous was the feeling of sleeping in my own bed once again.
