Caching Again in Dothan, AL 2/9/2008

We left this morning for our last day of caching in Dothan as tomorrow we are going to Enterprise and then taking Monday off and are leaving for FL on Tuesday. We started out with a cache at Walton Park which was hidden behind an oak tree, that's the one thing we have learned her in the south is the difference between oak, cedar, magnolia and fir trees. Next it was on to a cache hidden below The Monument to the Hog. This is a sculpture made in 1967 of a hog erected by 2 sons of a feed mill operator, Bob Godwin, who made the art for marketing and promotion purposes. They used steel sheets 26 feet long and 13 feet high and solid round rods welded together into the contour of a pig and mounted it onto a trailer. The pig's head was motorized and moved side to side and was used along with a sign that read "Going Whole Hog for Bob's Feeds". The pig is now labeled Emfinger Steel who bought the land years ago and it is now wrapped in Christmas lights for the holiday season.
Then it was on to a cache in Wiregrass Veterans Park a site with 3 lovely monuments to the Veterans of different wars. Then it was on to downtown Dothan and a cache located in another small park in the middle of town with a statue of the Roman Goddess Lady Justice. Then across the street to the Houston County Courthouse and a cache in back of the building. A few other interesting things we saw in Dothan were murals on 14 walls in the downtown area all within walking distance of each other, the series of plexi-glass peanuts called "Peanuts Around Town" with each peanut having a different theme. The one we saw was "Kiss Goodbye to Breast Cancer, and then we also saw the Dothan Opera House. It was built in 1915 and the acoustics are so good that the Atlanta Symphony chose it as the place to record there records. The Victorian style building is on the National Register of Historic Buildings.
Then it was on to the Houston Love Memorial Library for a unique cache there. It was a multi cache that started outside on a huge carved wooden statue (more about that later) where you found a clue to where the final cache container was, which was inside the library. You had to go inside and look up the name Robert Egbert who just coincidently wrote a book named "The GPS Handbook". Then you had to locate the book on the shelves and under the shelf above his book was a magnetic key holder with the log to sign to get credit for the cache find. Very clever and original. Now more on the statue. Peter Toth, the author of the sculpture, donated pieces of art like this to all 50 states, which are on display in different cities across the country. This particular sculpture was part of his "Trail of the Whispering Giants" carvings and was named Mus-Quoian. This sculpture carved out of oak wood was dedicated in Spring 1973 and stands 20 feet high and weighs about 2000 pounds. Peter Toth was born in 1947 in Hungary and immigrated to the United States. He created a series of sculptures called "The Trail of the Whispering Giants" to honor and raise the nation's conscience to the plight of the Native Americans and has a total of 60 statues with at least 1 in every state. The statues can be anywhere from 20' to 50' high and when he interprets what to sculpt he says "I study the Indians of the area, then visualize and Indian within the log. It is a composite of all the native people of the state". He currently has sculptures in Canada and is contemplating creating other sculptures in other countries.
Our last cache of the day was located at the office of a local attorney and then it was on back to the RV for lunch and doing logs and our blog. We got dinner from Larry's BBQ again as it was delicious and we enjoyed it very much. After dinner we watched tv so its time to say good night and till tomorrow and we love you and miss you.



Picture List:1R-Monument to the Hog, 2L-The Trail of the Whispering Giants-Mus-Quoian statue, 3 & 4-Wiregrass Veteran's Park, 5L-Kiss Goodbye to Breast Cancer Peanut, 6R-Lady Justice, 7-9-Wall Murals in Dothan, 10-Dothan Opera House, 11- Wall Mural in Dothan.