Wapakoneta, Ohio

Wapakoneta Court House

Stopped a few days in Wapakoneta, OH.  We stayed in a Coast to Coast campground, one of our membership campground parks.  

It's 'Wapak' to the locals.  Enjoyed this city.   It was really clean, lots of old houses, really old cemeteries and a great biking trail west of town at Grand Lake.  

The inside of the court house can compare to a lot of the state capitols we've toured over the years.  In fact, nicer than some.  This partial stained glass window was particularly fine and notice the interior:

The security guard must have been bored because he did a really good job of telling us all about the building.  Turns out that when it was built, there was a huge attic.  Without raising the roof, they were able to insert two extra floors into that space.  There is still attic room above the add-ons where the air conditioners are located.  

Originally, this Lady Liberty statue was on the very top of
the dome.  But the copper had badly worn off, and not much remained of her.  It was the grade school children to the rescue, who donated many thousands of pennies to be used for the refurbishment of the statue.  This is it (The one on the right):

The campground had a brand-spanking-new 18 hole mini-golf course.  Had all the flags, new carpet, stone barriers and water traps and fountain.  Interestingly, it had indents on some of the greens, and they used a different texture and sand colored carpet as sand traps and a really rough green carpet for the rough. 

There were many fine old houses like in the picture.  And an old firehouse.  A horse drawn fire cart was displayed on the lawn.  It was built in 1860.

One item of note, this was the hometown of Dudley Nichols.  He was the screenwriter for productions like "Stagecoach", "The Bells of St Mary's", and "For Whom The Bell Tolls".  Read about it here:

Heat/Cool Plant

adjacent to the court house was this funny structure.  It provides the heat and cooling for the court house.  Here's a picture of the original boiler going in and the remodel one in 2012:

The security guard gave us directions to a cafe he recommended.  It used a wood fired oven to cook the orders.  I ordered a bison burger, Eloise ordered the reuben.  We split them up.  They were both great but E says she preferred the bison.  It was really huge and delicious.

Bison burger at J. Maries

A nice paved, level bike/hiking trail was near.   Neat covered bridge over the trail in the background.  There were several along the way, in fact the name of the trail was Covered Bridge Trail.   First time we wore our helmets was on this trip.  E said hers hurt some, but I was okay.  Wasn't nearly as hot under it as I'd feared.  We've been lugging them around for years.  According to the gps we did 5.8 miles with 1 hour 31 minutes of moving time and 51:38 minutes of stopped time, looking for all the geocaches.  We ended the trip with 12 finds and 3 we didn't.  There were a few others that we skipped due to the fact that they were in really tall weeds. 

We spent some memorable days here in Wapak.  Only thing lacking was an opportunity to square dance!

Next up: Somewhere northeast of here.