June 9, 2017

• Interesting Places

  While I was "out west" with my friend Maxine, geocaching took us to several interesting places. We didn't always find the cache, but we always found some cool piece of history, or beauty, or pop culture. Here are a few of the buildings (and a few non-buildings) we discovered as we meandered the back roads of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

  A Clock Tower

  
  

  This was more modern than most clock towers you see in small towns across America. It was cool because of the windows allowing us to see the clockworks. The cache was supposed to be in one of the drainpipes, but we couldn't find it. The storm gutters and drain pipes all looked brand spankin' new, so we suspected the cache was gone along with the old gutters and pipes.

  A Couple of Old Train Depots

  

  This one had been turned into a train station museum, but it looked like it hadn't been open to the public for a long time. I took a photo through the window.

  

  Luckily, the ammo can cache was still hidden under some wooden steps at the back of the depot.

  

  This pile of luggage and old milk can were outside the depot in another small town. The cache wasn't hidden here; I walked along the back of the depot on my way to the cache site and stopped for a quick photo. This was part of a museum complex that included a building filled with displays from the town's past, the old depot, some farm equipment, and other things I didn't see up close. And it was all free, but Max and I each left a donation.

  Dorothy's House

  

  Actually, the replica of the Gale Farmhouse from The Wizard of Oz movie was the least interesting thing here. We found Dorothy and the Tin Man, and the gift shop that was in an old historic house. I overheard Dorothy and the sales clerk in the gift shop talking. Dorothy had jumped out at the clerk to scare her and the clerk said, "Don't do that! You know this place is haunted!" So of course I asked to hear stories and was treated to tales of footsteps pacing upstairs and items being moved around in the gift shop. (There was no cache here, we just noticed the signs and stopped.)

  Three Jails

  

  I mentioned this one in a previous post. The cache was actually just a log book. The log book was actually the Visitor Guest Book. I wonder if whoever is in charge of replacing the guest book when it's full wonders about the weird names in it, like saintvi and MaxB On the River.

  

  This jail was twice the size of the one above, which isn't saying much. It was still teeny-tiny, but there was at least room for a desk, and the cell was big enough to hold two people in a pinch.

  

  This is the smallest jail I've ever seen. It's just a log with chains attached, but it could hold up to four prisoners if they scrunched up and got really chummy. That's me posing as the town sheriff. There's a photo on Maxine's camera of her in chains. The cache was somewhere nearby... I can't remember exactly where, maybe on that small sign on the left.

  Two One-Room Schoolhouses

  

  I know I already posted this photo previously, but I can't find the photos I took of the other one. It's too bad because we were able to go inside that one and talk to the "school marm" who had just finished teaching a busload of schoolchildren on a field trip.

  A Historic House

  

  As happened so often on this trip, we arrived after the last tour. But we found the cache in a sign in the front yard, just out of this shot on the right.

  A Historic Bank

  

  It's not just the age of the building, but it's status as the site of the first successful daylight bank robbery in America. It says Jesse James on all of the signs, but it was Archie Clement and his gang who planned and carried out the robbery, at least according to Wikipedia. And honestly, I trust Wikipedia more in this case because who's heard of Archie Clement?

  A Couple of Jesse James' Hideouts

  

  This was a restaurant where Jesse James used to hide. There is still a restaurant at this site - a much larger one. Most of these Jesse James geocaches were virtual caches. A virtual cache is an older type of geocache that does not have a physical container, but takes you to an interesting place and you have to post a photo or a password found on a sign or something to prove you've been there. In this case, it was a name on a plaque in front of the modern restaurant.

  

  This limestone outcropping was located a few hundred feet through the woods behind the home of a friend of Jesse James. The stone foundations of the house and barn, as well as the stonework around the well are still visible just off the path. Once you pass them, and after a bit of an uphill climb, you will find a maze of limestone formations that could easily hide several men and possibly even horses, although we didn't explore the hidden corridors enough to know for sure. This was another of my favorite stops on the road trip. It was a virtual cache, but the sign with the password on it had been cut down, so we took photos of each other in one of the limestone corridors as proof we'd made the trek through the woods to the hideout.

  A Cave

  

  Not just any cave, but the cave that inspired Mark Twain to have Tom Sawyer and Rebecca Thatcher get lost in a cave. The name of this cave is Mark Twain's Cave and it's located in Hannibal, Missouri. We got there in the morning and they were open, but all of their tours for the day were booked by school groups. We found the physical cache outside the cave and got all the answers for the Earth Cache (another type of virtual where you have to learn an earth science lesson and answer questions) before we left. That's Max and me outside the cave entrance.

  I still have another post or two to share about this trip, and then there's GeoWoodstock to write about. Who knows what else I'll get up to by the time I finish all those posts?

   

  • 10:03 pm
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