Virtual Extremes

We recently enjoyed a short vacation in Texas and Oklahoma. Our main goals were to visit and hike the LBJ Grasslands and Wichita Mountains. We enjoyed both. We were also able to add another virtual extreme to our cache finds when we visited the world's littlest skyscraper in Wichita Falls.

Whoa, that's four floors shooting upward toward the clouds!

The Newman-McMahon Building was built in 1919 after cash was raised from investors to build a 146m tall building or so the investors believed. What they really invested in was the 14.6m tall building shown above. Yes, it was a scam created by a local oilman. At 146m, the building would have been 40% of the height of the Empire State Building. In the low skyline of Wichita Falls this four story building would still give a great view of the town, but it appears to be used for retail.

This wasn't our first virtual at a little place with big plans. We also enjoyed visiting the world's smallest park in Portland.

Mills End Park was another fun stop on our too brief visit to Portland in 2011.

I am happy to see virtuals have returned for at least one encore. Like all of caching, they were a mixed bag of good and uninspired, but many like the two above give us a reason to visit fun, quirky places we haven't seen and wouldn't see except by sheer luck. We have been lucky to be awarded one of the new ones to locate. Our biggest issue so far has been deciding which of the out of the way places we want to share with only one winner possible.