Last stop of the day. Emporia Kansas

6 Presidents sat at this table.

In a quiet tree lined neighborhood of Emporia, not far from the campus of Emporia State University is the home of one of the important figures of late 19th and early 20th century. William Allen White, publisher of the Emporia Gazette.

A couple of Biographies:

http://www.emporia.com/waw/williamawhite.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Allen_White

I'd like to show you a nice outside picture of the house ,but can't, the batteries started going down on the camera.I can't show you the bed the 3 Presidents who spent the night in the house slept in,notably Theodore Roosevelt. Or the cheetah skin that Roosevelt gave White.That was on the second floor. The camera gave out on the first, oh well, It was the last stop of the day anyway.

It was a good start to my personal Kansas Tour. Next stop in a week or two. I did do a couple of dry runs I guess you'd say around town. The visits to the Train station and the Combat Air Museum are part of what gave me the seed for doing this, I'll cover those stops later. But it begins

Tall Grass Prairie National Preserve -Pic page 3

There really can only be one caption for these pictures. The Park ranger turned around to us on the bus before letting us out and said " How do like my office ?"

Tall Grass Prairie National Preserve Pics 2- The Bus Tour,1

Left to Right: 1. Stone Fence 2.It rained earlier in the week

Tall Grass National Preserve Photos 1-Ranch House

Top Left to Right
1. Barn and Visitors Center 2. Ranch House

Middle Left to Right
3. View from the Front Porch 4. Root Cellar
Bottom
5. Your Blogger

6/14/08 Stop 3: Tall Grass Prairie National Preserve

Tall Grass is a joint public/private partnership between the National Park Service,The Nature Conservancy and Kansas Park Trust. 10,894 acres of Park land have been preserved. The Park area includes a Ranch house ,built out of Limestone in 1880. The guide speaks of 450 species of Plants,150 kinds of birds,39 types of reptiles and 31 species of mammals. Several hiking trails are available to those who get permits.





At 12:30 we waited on the front porch of the ranch house.The front door opened and we were greeted a tour guide from The National Park Service complete with the Smokey the Bear hat. She gave a tour of the 11 Room Ranch hour. It was build by a Cattle Rancher named Stephen F Jones.The most interesting part was the Root cellar and several of the underground rooms.





Afterwards we took a bus tour of the Prairie , we went about 7 miles into the pastures of the Preserve. We saw cattle and several of the plants and birds mentioned above. The tour guide I think knew all of them and then some. The bus stopped twice, one at a field of limestone where we saw a bird that flew onto a plant and stayed around, not bothered by the company at all.I must have heard the names of a hundred flowers,weeds,grass types. Most of it went right over my head.

The second stop the bus made was up a hill, with a few 18 miles in any direction. The amazing thing about the view was you could see no modern conviences in any direction. No Highway, no elecritcal poles, no phone poles, nothing except the bus. The amazing thing about the view is had been unchanged since stone fences had been built in the 1880's. It was easy to imagine 40 years before that the land would have been filled with hordes of Bison Buffalos roaming the Priairie, the view Kansa Indian must have seen or people in wagon trains of the Santa Fe Trial. Simply stunning and so hard to leave.

2 Reasons to return
-To see the Tall Grass in the Fall
-The Bison maybe in 2009 will return, plans to introduce Bisons to the Prairie (or Re-introduce).They will start with 25 and watch it grow through the years.

As always National Parks are national treasures. For anyone who thinks all government is bad, visit a national park.

Next few posts will be pictures

6/14/08 Stop 2: Cottonwood Falls

One of the most amazing things to this city boy about these small towns is the serenity.When we got out of the car the only noise was the wind blowing and the sound of an auctioneer about a block away. The serenity was repeated in Cottonwood Falls only with someone playing Rock and Roll.

Cottonwood Falls is the county seat of Chase County, known for a Limestone Court house built in the 1870's.Were it not be restored it would be oldest courthouse still in use west of Mississippi.The back of the post card I bought says "It was built in 1871-73 in the renaissance style of the Louis XIII period. The 113 foot tall,three story structure is of native limestone, with mansard roof and native walnut spiral staircase and balustrade."It sits on the town square with a brick road leading up to it past another downtown ,this one filled with restaurants,antique stores,art galleries and the Chase County Museum. We were able to peek in the window and see the staircase, I put the camera to the door but the picture didn't work out, unlike the train depot. The Museum wasn't open until 1 and we had places to be so we missed it.

On the court house square was a cannon, a memorial to those who had died in World War 1,World War 2 and Vietnam.On the right corner was an abandoned gas station, we'd see these old gas stations a lot on our journey.

We ate at a restaurant/souvenir store. The menu was written on a dry chalk board it read ham and croissant, Turkey and croissant or Roast beef and croissant with salad bar $7.95.Water was served in a Mason jar. a couple of tourist came in as did a local who only wanted Coffee and a Cinnamon roll.The roll was huge,defiantly a meal in and of itself.

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.