Back in the late 1800’s, there was a man named George Boldt.
George started his career as a dishwasher at a hotel.
George was a big dreamer and he did everything possible to live out his dreams.
He eventually made his way through the ranks in the hotel industry and ended up being a very, very rich man.
But Mr. Boldt is famous for something else, something I wish I was famous for…his love.
Mr. Boldt was madly in love with his wife, Lousie.
He loved her so much that he wanted to build her the most amazing summer home ever.
But he needed a place to put this home.
He ended up finding a great place for their summer home in the 1000 islands region in
New York.
He found a place called
Hart
Island.
He later renamed the island
Heart
Island and actually added land to the shape of the island so that it would be in the shape of a heart.
This home is now known as Boldt’s Castle.
This place is absolutely amazing…just look at the outside of it.
The detail put into the the outside of this place just blows me away.
This place is 6 stories high and has 127 rooms.
There are a few other buildings on this island such as the power house which you can see on the left side of the picture above.
There is also a play house, which is for entertaining and it also has two bowling alleys.
Personally, I wouldn’t build something like this for someone I love, but due to the amount of the detail in this castle, I can totally see how George put everything into building this amazing symbol of his love for his wife.
So where does the pirate tale come in…well…a couple months ago, a few World Racers were trying to figure out a place that we could get together, maybe do a little camping, and just hang out.
We were trying to find the perfect place, when I remembered a conversation I had when I was in
Korea.
I had a friend that told me about the 1000 islands region in
New York and he also showed me a few amazing pictures.
I threw the idea out there and it ended up being the final choice.
One of the main reasons we chose this area was because we wanted to see Boldt’s Castle.
So over Memorial Day weekend, Lindsey, Sarah, and I met up and made our way to 1000 islands to do some camping.
I think it would be safe to say that between the three of us we have a pretty crazy imaginations and we somehow got on the topic of pirates.
We ended up giving each other pirate names.
In the picture on the left, Lenses McDonald and Fanny A. Turtle are trying to blend in with there Memorial Day headwear.
On the right, Captain
Djibouti was doing a little thinking on the boat.
So early one morning, we made our way to the docks.
At first glance, Lenses spotted the castle and said, “That’s it?”
She then realized that she was just looking at the powerhouse and followed up with the comment, “That’s it!”
We had spotted our treasure.
We walked around the docks for a while trying to figure out how to get to our treasure.
We found out which boat we needed to get on to make it to the castle.
We paid a couple people to lets us get onto the boat.
Before we got on the boat, we decided that we would have to disguise ourselves being that we are pirates and we didn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves.
I thought we did a great job of disguising ourselves with our goofy Memorial Day headgear, but the one of the workers on this ship must have spotted our matching skull and crossbones tattoos on our necks.
He immediately stopped us and searched us to make sure that us pirates types weren’t sneaking any alcohol on board.
After passing that test, we boarded the Uncle Sam.
We went on a beautiful 2 ¼ hour boat ride through this region and finally reached our treasure.
I basically stood there in awe for a couple minutes just trying to soak in what we had just found.
The pictures of this place did not lie.
This place was huge and this place was beautiful.
This guy built this amazing castle for his wife because he loved her so much.
I sat there and thought about the things I built for love and the best thing I could come up with was probably a Valentines Day card for my mom in second grade.
Man…am I ever lame.
We sat down in the grass to just enjoy the outside and to eat some grub.
When we finished, we started to make our way up to the castle.
We walked in, and we were amazed, the first floor was beautiful.
It was all decked out with all sorts of décor from that time period.
There were marble floors, and this amazing staircase that you only see in movies.
We decided to go to the top floor and work our way down.
We quickly realized that our treasure, wasn’t a treasure at all.
We got to the top floor and found nothing, literally.
Actually weren’t full of nothing, they were covered in graffiti.
We saw graffiti that was older than my parents.
Even the graffiti had graffiti on it.
In some of the other rooms, we found holes in the ceiling, floor, and walls.
There was absolutely nothing in floors 2-6.
Remember this is about 100 rooms with nothing but graffiti.
This place looked like a storm went though the place.
It was actually a little disturbing to see the inside of this place.
We did find one room that was set up to tell the whole story of the castle.
It turns out that 4 years in to construction, George’s wife Louise, died.
He sent a message to the island and asked everyone to stop working and to leave.
The castle just sat there unfinished.
The reason it looked like a storm went through the place is because for years the weather just ripped the place apart.
A lot of the outside and the other structures on the island have actually been reconstructed to look like they did in the early 1900’s.
This was supposed to be a symbol of his love, for the love of his life.
But when Louise died, he decided not to finish this symbol of his love.
He actually never even returned to the island because he didn’t want to be reminded of what happened.
When the three of us walked out, we were all a little shocked.
We were not really prepared to see the ugliness, the sadness, the destruction, or the emptiness on the inside of this place.
This place was beautiful on the outside, but there was nothing on the inside.
We actually went and sat in the grass again.
Lenses and Fanny decided to catch some shut eye, but I couldn’t.
I started thinking about this guy’s symbol of his love.
It was so amazing on the outside but so empty on the inside.
It just doesn’t seem right to me.
For some reason this story feels a little too familiar…
Because of my relationship with Jesus, I want Him to use me so that I am a symbol of His love to the world.
But because of certain choices I make, I often end up doing exactly what Mr. Boldt did.
I tend to focus on how others see me.
So I do things like volunteer, wear Christian t-shirts, listen to Christian music, tell people I will pray for them, and tell people about the things that “I” have done to help others.
If I had a nicer truck I promise that I would have a “Jesus Fish” stuck on the back.
If I had half a brain to remember, I would say God bless you when someone sneezes too.
There are so many things that we can do to look good on the outside.
Don’t get me wrong, none of these above things I listed are bad.
I actually think it is a great thing for someone to see us and be able to see God’s love.
But we need to make sure that what is on the outside isn’t what defines us.
I think it is so important to make sure that we keep working on decorating our hearts with God’s love.
We need to be shining with God’s love for all to see, and then when people get close enough to see what is in our hearts, we need to make sure that they walk away having felt God’s love and not walking away feeling tricked because we look so good on the outside yet are so empty on the inside.
God help us be a symbol of your love to the world.
Please don’t let us be satisfied being half done.
Keep working on us and forming us so that we can be the symbol you want us to be to the world.
You are awesome.
I love you.
