Welcome to the Farewell to Finder’s Fest geo-art, brought to you by the Forest Minions! This series celebrates weird and unusual things throughout the Sunshine State. Please do not go to the posted locations. Rather, solve the challenging quiz found at the bottom of each page, for the final location. For the letterbox caches, please leave the stamp in the cache. They are not trade items. For the discerning traveler, we’ve included the GPS coordinates for these bizarre locations, when we were able to establish them.
Xanadu – Location 28.3309, -81.4746
In Kissimmee on U.S. Highway 192 there is a weird abandoned structure that looks like a cluster of giant igloos. These white domed pods built in 1983 by architect Roy Mason are what was to be the House of the Future, a 6,240-square foot tourist attraction offering a look at a fully automated home. It cost about 300,000 dollars to build and featured automatic plumbing systems, video-walled suites, computerized kitchen, and various other futuristic ideas.
The House of the Future, designed to be as maintenance free as possible, featured a wiring and plumbing system in the walls to allow for reconfiguration of the whole house. The kitchen was designed with four microcomputers that acted as a family dietician by planning meals according to a person’s height, weight, age, and level of activity. An automatic chef would move food from the refrigerator to the microwave to the table. The system would also play background music themed to the type of food and would automatically keep track of the grocery inventory. The house also had its own greenhouse with a computer that monitored water levels, soil contents, sunlight, humidity, and ventilation of plants. For food that had to be bought from a grocery store there was the tele-shopping system with its own video-catalog of grocery items that could be purchased and paid for through a link with the Xanadu’s tele-banking system.
Here is the super duper, way challenging, really hard trivia question, which, if solved properly, will lead you to the final coordinates:
Question: Which critter has the highest amount of feathers per square inch of skin surface?
A: Elephant = N29° 28.297' W81° 50.566'
B: Naked mole rat = N29° 28.287' W81° 50.566'
C: Penguin = N29° 28.277' W81° 50.566'