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.
Garden of Eden – Location 30.4571, -84.9728
If you thought the Garden of Eden was somewhere in the Middle East, forget it, it was in Bristol, Florida––or so the legend goes. Bristol, located in Liberty County, looks like any other small town in northern Florida, except this was where Adam and Eve got their start according to the late Elvy E. Callaway, a Baptist preacher during the fifties.
Reverend Callaway studied the area for fifty or more years, and discovered a significant number of features that match the Bible’s description of the Garden of Eden. He pointed out that Genesis 2:10 states that “a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from hence it was parted, and became into four heads.” That sounds exactly like the Apalachicola River, which does indeed split into four rivers…or more if you count every little tributary along its course. Callaway claimed that only two rivers in the world fit this description, one in Siberia, and the Apalachicola. Adding a bonus to Callaway’s theory is the Torreya tree, also called the gopherwood tree, the kind that Noah used to build the ark. The only place in the world where these rare trees grow is near Bristol, Florida. The property Callaway identified as Eden is now known as the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve.
Here is the super duper, way challenging, really hard trivia question, which, if solved properly, will lead you to the final coordinates:
Question: The average person pees enough to fill one of these, every month.
A: Thimble = N29° 29.268' W81° 48.567'
B: Olympic swimming pool = N29° 29.268' W81° 48.577'
C: Bathtub = N29° 29.268' W81° 48.587'