The Front Porch of the Flint Hills- 6/14/08 part 1

Trip Date: June 14, 2008

Emporia is 50 miles south and west on Turnpike from Topeka, Tall Grass Prairie National Preserve is maybe 20 miles west on Hwy 50 to k-177 and maybe 2 or 3 miles North. The Preserve is part of the National Park System. The purpose of these journeys is to get there eventually but we have a few stops to make before we get there.

On a technical note this is the first time I've played around trying to put pictures , I'll work on it, so the blog may look clunky until I figure it out. I took 87 pictures yesterday in 4 places, learned if you are going to take about 30 the night before at an indoor football game and 87 the next day it's going to drain the batteries and a a set of batteries will be as necessary as a good map.

Before you turn to K177, you can turn south and enter the town of Strong City, Kansas.Just before the turn is a dinner with a sign painted in the window reading "Good Eats and Ice".Sorry to say we passed that up, I love Good Eats.

The road that cuts through Strong City and eventually takes you to Cottonwood Falls is flag lined, a church and some of the houses are limstone , one of the real attractions of the region is the limestone buildings. You'll see these in the Chase County Courthouse in the Cottonwood Falls entry and the Jones Ranch house in the Tall grass entry.

Downtown Strong City as a website dares calls it, is 2 blocks long and contains at least 2 bars, for a population of 581. The polls in the street all have flags, not a holiday, I image those flags are there everyday. It's what we do in fly over country, not a something that was discovered on 9/11.You'll find a bit of romantic about my home state. The state motto is "Ad Astra per aspera " a Latin phrase:Through the Stars with hardship. Yes we do bake in the summer,blow away in the spring and freeze in the winters .And our history...... William Allen White said "Things that begin in Kansas,finish in History books." So I found it somewhat comforting to drive down this main street and American flags on the street lights.

Our mission in Strong City was to see the Santa Fe Train Depot, we found it behind a caboose and a gravel parking lot. A red bricked building with several windows boarded up, we could peak in one some of the windows and see the wooden benches. Money is being raised to restore the building.

http://skyways.lib.ks.us/towns/StrongCity/depot.html

Cottonwood Falls is a couple miles down the road,but first we had to wait for the train.