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.
Da Vinci of Debris – Location 27.3720, -81.9777
Somewhere between Arcadia and Bradenton, where you’d least expect it, is a real fantasyland. This place is miles from nowhere but if you go to the tiny hamlet of Ona on highway 64, then follow Horse Creek about nine miles south through swamps and cow pastures you’ll find it. Howard Solomon, an internationally known sculptor, has taken to the extreme the old saying “a man’s house is his castle”
Using what others have thrown out, he has built a 12,000 square foot castle complete with towers, a moat, 80 stained glass windows each with a story, and an electric elevator built from junk. The entire castle is shiny silver, that’s because it’s covered with thousands of aluminum printing plates discarded by a local newspaper down the road in Wauchula.
Here is the super duper, way challenging, really hard trivia question, which, if solved properly, will lead you to the final coordinates:
Question: What is the approximate age of the oldest known piece of chewing gum?
A: 1 year = N29° 26.592' W81° 46.531'
B: 80 bazillion years = N29° 26.592' W81° 46.521'
C: 9,000 years = N29° 26.592' W81° 46.511'