Cawker City, KS weighs in at almost 18,000 pounds. Okay maybe not the city but the Ball of Twine that sits in the center of the city. Every town has something of interest and this Ball of Twine is a RV stopper. We did not make a special trip to get to Cawker City; we were passing through going from Alma, NE to Junction City, KS. Continue reading
Friends accuse us of planning our travels around Farmers Markets and they are correct. As we have said before, we are addicted to Farmers Markets. Most of our weekly groceries are purchased at Farmers Markets and we enjoy the variety and freshness that the markets offer. No market is too small for us to visit because we always find something interesting.
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The sculpture was moving with the gentle breeze against a blue sky background. The silhouette children below the sculpture appeared to be running around looking up at the flying machine. Sitting watching the flying machine gently moving was calming to our travel weary souls. We were enjoying a quiet moment in downtown Chanute, KS. After watching the flying machine swaying, we became curious why Chanute, in southeast Kansas, was honoring the Wright Brothers and their Flying Machine. Continue reading
Let’s go visit Ft. Riley. Sounds great except we are not military. That does not matter, anyone can visit the Fort. Off we go. Sure enough we showed our driver’s license and were allowed on the post. In this time of extreme security, we were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to visit this historic fort. The fort is a tribute to the U.S. Cavalry; not only the men yet also the horses that were a necessary and important component of the Cavalry. Continue reading
Lake Scott State Park was an oasis for us – it was our first cool weather and the lake was full of water. The park is not only a recreational haven it is also full of history. The park is a nature lover’s paradise with hiking, horseback and biking trails, swimming, and boating, along with just plain relaxing.
Kansas and prairies are almost synonymous. You ride and ride and every once in a while you see a farmhouse, a barn, a small community but the landscape barely changes in the South West part of the state – prairies and rolling hills. But then, there’s Monument Rocks. Also known as the Kansas Pyramids
or Chalk Pyramids, they were the first natural wonder to be inducted as a National Natural Landmark in Kansas by the Department of Interior on October 31, 1968. These outcroppings are on private land and the owner generously shares these wonders with the public. The rocks are limestone formations formed 80 million years ago when the area was an inland sea and reach a height of 70 feet.
Before there was “Women’s Lib”, back when the West was wild and a couple decades after Kansas became a state, Maria De Greer and her daughter, Ida Eastman, founded what is today Scott City, KS. De Greer, a widow from Chicago, was a writer, a feminist, a newspaper woman, and the first woman admitted to the Kansas Bar Association. Being a strong advocate of the Temperance Movement, she came to Kansas to build a “model” community with no taverns and no brothels. Continue reading
We found the Yellow Brick Road and it is in Liberal, Kansas. Liberal is recognized as the official home of Dorothy Gale and the Land of Oz. Dorothy’s house is a 1907 farmhouse donated to the Seward County Historical Society. It was carefully restored and furnished to resemble the house in the movie “The Wizard of Oz”.
Goodbye Texas – what a relief, and now we are in Liberal, Kansas. Don’t worry we have not changed our political afflication and we wondered whether the name was a political statement but found out it came about through hospitality and generosity. In the 1880s water was scarce in Southwest Kansas and what was available was often expensive. S. S. Rogers dug a well for his own use yet always allowed travelers access to his water. The travelers offered to pay, yet Rogers said “Water is always free here”. The story goes that most travelers replied “that’s mighty liberal of you” and the area become known as “the liberal well”.
