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.
Dome House – Location 25.8453, -81.6811
Built in Florida in 1981 on Ten Thousand Island which is south of Marco Island, and only accessible via water, the ultra-modern Dome House is a complex of stilted concrete igloos slowly being reclaimed by the sea. A number of legends have sprung up surrounding the origins of the crumbling cluster of domes at the tip of Cape Romano. Everything from a secret cult to aliens have been credited with creating the space-age buildings.
But the truth is that the now-empty concrete bubbles were born from the mind of retired oil producer, Bob Lee. The structures were built in 1981 and in Lee’s initial conception, the eccentric vacation home was to be a self-sufficient, eco-friendly relaxation spot for his family. Among the innovations at the site are the raised units themselves which would be heated by lighting fires among the concrete pylons beneath the rooms, and the dome-shaped roofs which were to direct rainwater into troughs that would then be collected for showering and dishwater. Even the tumultuous Florida weather was taken into account and the sturdy, rounded domes were able to sustain hurricane winds with little damage. Unfortunately as the landscape on the edge of the island began to change, simple erosion finally made the homes unlivable.
Here is the super duper, way challenging, really hard trivia question, which, if solved properly, will lead you to the final coordinates:
Question: What critter’s liver oil is squalene made from?
A: Pokemon = N29° 28.181' W81° 51.629'
B: Unicorns = N29° 28.181' W81° 51.619'
C: Sharks = N29° 28.181' W81° 51.609'