MN Geocaching Road Trip

 After enjoying a Gopher win in football and a delicious brunch of a turkey broccoli stuffed omelet the next morning, we spent last weekend traveling through the last eight counties in southeast MN to complete another county filled state.

We traveled from Minneapolis (the black star) to Rochester and used it for our base the next 2 days. The red star indicates our home base for our road trips.

LaCrescent, a community along the border of MN and WI and the Mississippi River.

We crossed the Mississippi to LaCrosse WI to grab a few caches, just because we could, and to make our WI count of caches at 50+.

an 1888 mailbox for the Gaynor Electric Co.

geocache in LaCrosse

And back into MN to continue the county collection.

I always get excited when I see these signs. 

Woo Hoo! Buggy sighting!

And along a side road, a hay wagon. My lucky day!

We came across an interesting historic water tower in the community of Kasson. Constructed of limestone blocks from a nearby quarry in 1895, the unique 80' water tower was used until 1996. Originally, it had a wooden tank. The cost of construction was $6000.

There is a spiral staircase within that leads to the top of the tower.

This replica of the stone water tower was in the cemetery of the nearby community of Mantorville that supplied the limestone for the tower.

painted rock at the Veterans Memorial

note the can of Spam

more on that in another blog post

communities of Kasson and Mantorville

This was one of the more unique and creative Adventure Labs we have ever done. Of course we do not read all the information before we start on our quest, so we mumble and grumble but eventually get the key words we need to complete the task. After completing the quest, I read the info...The coordinates took us to a specific location. We were to turn 180º and look for a specific sign and its shape. The title of the Adventure Lab Watch Your Back made total sense once I read the introduction. DUH!

This was one of the more creative geocaches in a log we have encountered. It was an axe split log with a hollowed area for the container.

The log fit back together on two nails and secured with a bit of thin wire that was hard to discern if you did not know what you were looking for and a geocacher.

This majestic church, Holden Lutheran Church founded in 1856, was surrounded by cemetery and located in the country near the Holden Community Park, also in the country.

We are always a bit leery to step on private property for a geocache, but I am glad we did, despite the homeowner's garage sale!

We left some swag and I took the cute little red trash canister on the bottom shelf. I have a plan for it!

Also in Winona, we stopped at what used to be the Knitting Mills.

Part of the mill building is now used as the Chamber offices for the community. This beautiful loon greeted us at the front door.

A stop in Austin was the final community and county to complete our geocaching adventure.

One of those Special Places in Austin MN was the Spam Museum, but that visit will have its very own blog post!

(The differing shades indicate differing increments of geocaches found in the counties. The darker the color, the more found geocaches.) A filled Minnesota map now makes 5 states where we have geocached in every county: South Dakota, Arizona, Nebraska, New Mexico and Minnesota. Our summer geocaching goal is complete!