And so it goes

I discovered a little park last summer that has some pretty neat gardens.  I've found myself there 3 times already this season.  I'm waiting for that amazing flower photoshoot....and oh Henry can run without a leash for a twenty minute visit.  Late June blooms...

I'm at it Again!

Recently a friend asked me, "how do you find all these school houses?" Well here's how I do it.

The first thing I do is decide on a County to visit.  I have both Minnesota and Wisconsin county maps on both of my computer desktops for easy access.

For my next find I decided Meeker County is a county I have not searched yet.  So the next thing I do is open my 1925 Historic Map of Meeker county found here.  Then I scan the map for the letters "sch" and a black square-looks like this:

When I find one, I start looking for an identifying body of water.  In this case Pigeon Lake.

On Google maps I locate the lake and go to "Earth" view.

See Pigeon Lake?  Red marker indicates the lake.  Now count the county roads under the lake. Until you see the T in the road.  The 1925 map indicates that the school house was/is at the T in the road.

 Zoomed in...yes! something is still there

My eye knows for sure that this school house is still standing.  From the looks of it probably a family home now.  Sometimes I can view in street view mode, in this case I cannot which means the Google camera car never drove down this road. Then I mark the school house on the Google map with a star and save this location so that whenever I access my map I can quickly find this school house again. 

 Here is a snapshot of a portion of my Google school house map.