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.
Owl Totem – Location 28.9763, -81.3570
Hontoon Island in Florida’s St. Johns River has yielded many Native American artifacts, including an owl-shaped totem pole that is the only one of its kind found east of the Mississippi, thought to be 700 to 800 years old. Found in 1955, the 10-foot owl, carved from a single piece of southern hard pine, once guarded the shore of the 1,600-acre island, which is now a state park. Hontoon Island has a long history of indigenous habitation going back thousands of years. Similar effigies of an otter and a pelican were also found there.
A fiberglass replica of the owl still stands on the shore of Hontoon Island where it was first discovered. (The original is kept at Fort Caroline National Memorial in Jacksonville.) According to signs at the site, the owl totem was created by Timaquan people. But not all researchers agree. New evidence attributes the carving to a tribe called the Mayaca, a little-known inland people who spoke a different language than the Timaquan.
Here is the super duper, way challenging, really hard trivia question, which, if solved properly, will lead you to the final coordinates:
Question: What was the length of the longest TV commercial?
A: 30 seconds = N29° 28.293' W81° 51.562'
B: 80 bazillion years = N29° 28.293' W81° 51.572'
C: 14 hours = N29° 28.293' W81° 51.582'