My last opportunity to travel long distances has come and gone. So sad not to be able to travel full time, but life intervenes. This trip to the Plains had a solemn duty in mind, which could easily have led to an embarrassing arrest. My wife's father died in 2002, but his dog, Troubles, a Boston terrier, lived another 9 years, before Mrs. _____ had the dog put down. My wife's sister wanted to bury Troubles' ashes above her father's plot. Oh what fun! A graveyard within sight of some busy roads of Marysville, KS, an old crossroads in the northern part of the state isn't the best place to take a shovel if you aren't the gravedigger. My wife's sister was having trouble breaking the drought-parched earth, so I had to dig the hole in our gray activity, but the Tuesday Morning urn had an ample resting place for the ashes of Troubles, back with the human he loved so much.
We survived the incident with no trouble from an angry sexton wondering why three folks in broad daylight were digging a hole in a graveyard. The final touch for the solemn occasion was to glue a Boston terrier figurine on Doc's part of the headstone he'll share with Mrs. _____ when her time comes. Not sure how she'll react to a plastic figurine on her headstone. She still knows people in the hometown who would report the fact. She'll get over it; these are her children's works. Our trip for that day would lead us to another Pony Express station, a reproduction of Rock Creek Station (Pawnee), near Fairbury, NE, where Bill Hickock committed a possible murder in his younger years over the purchase of the station. On our way, we passed Wamego and were trapped into taking a tour of the Old Dutch Mill displays. Too bad the Oz Museum wasn't open that day.
The western phase of the October trip this year took us through Lyons, Great Bend, and on to Hays for a couple of days. The Cornado-Quivira Museum in Lyons tells the story of the Santa Fe Trail and the Coronado entrada, which coincided with Hernando de Soto's entrada from Florida, passing through Arkansas encountering important Mississippi River villages Pacaha (Wapanocca?), Casqui (Parkin?), Aquixo (Horseshoe Lake?), and Quizquiz (Walls, MS?). Both parties wound up in Texas encountering Caddo tribes. The Quivira lived at Lyons in the 16th century and are a Caddoan tribe encountering Coronado who followed the rudimentary Santa Fe Trail, a migration route into the late 19th century. The museum had an excellent selection of books on the period and selections on more recent history of the region. Was a pleasure to compare notes on the expeditions of 1500s by the ruthless Spaniards. It was the true beginning of the end for native cultures in North America. Disease from Europeans and warfare with Europeans would last another 400 years until their virtual extinction.
The next town was Great Bend, passing by Ft. Zarah, named after Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis' son who was killed at Baxter Springs, KS by Quantrill's guerrillas as part of Maj. Gen. Blunt's fateful trip from Ft. Scott to Ft. Smith. Curtis lead an expedition along the Santa Fe Trail after the native uprising of 1864 across the Kansas plains and founded this dugout fort. Had a great stop at a coffee shop in town and I suppose we were in the "office" of a very busy community activist. She bought a cup for a fellow who happened by and was a bank officer who supported an event she organized. Every town requires such people. Maybe I should have bought her a cup of coffee for her work to better her community. It was a good visit, but we reserved a room in Hays and continued the lengthy trip from Emporia, where we'd stayed for a couple of nights.
Hays is in the Smoky Hill River valley and was home to Ft. Hays in Frontier days. It was a good visit, then we visited the Sternberg Museum, where the famous "fish-within-a-fish" fossil is displayed. The museum explains the natural history of this part of Kansas, which was the floor of a shallow sea millennia ago. We would not be able to go as far west as hoped on this trip, the Fick Fossil Museum is in Oakley, not too far from Colorado. I wanted to visit Colby and Goodland as well as Pueblo ruins to the south and the Ft. Wallace site. Till next time.
A real treat of the trip was visiting Salina, though we pushed on to Abilene for the night to the east. We spent most of the day in Salina after a quick visit to Kanopolis and Ft. Harker and Mushroom Rocks State Park. While in Salina, we witnessed a fuzzy headed, fuzzy bearded fellow in mirrored shades, a likely candidate for being up to no good, driving a white1980s vintage Mustang GT. The shady character was turning onto a busy highway from a side street with a mattress wedged under his car. What on earth could he have done to manage that? It looked more like the boxed springs of a bed. He was skidding his wheels a bit because the bed was lifting his car as he attempted to turn. He made a wide turn onto the highway as folks were trying to pass the mattress which protruded about six feet into the passing lane as he turned. Last I saw of the fuzzy, mirrored shades 70's refugee. But the mattress or boxed springs was in the middle of the road with what appeared to be about 5 quarts of oil saturation when we passed by again. Maybe he removed his oil plug with the massive road obstruction. Not sure what that dude was on to run over a mattress in broad daylight on a quiet side street.
Downtown Salina was a treasure. The century old buildings, the towering grain elevator , Mokas coffee shop, the Stieffel Theatre, the Thursday night art crawl, and the beauty of downtown Salina will certainly earn another visit by my wife and I, perhaps next year. I loved what I saw of this town. The Smoky Hill Museum, around the corner from Cozy Inn, the quirky little burger joint where the slider was born was a fun visit. The Museum had a great selection of books on Kansas history and was a free museum, which is a treasure for the community and I would recommend a visit. On to Abilene for a night's stay. On our way to Abilene, an important terminus of the Chisholm Trail until the rail was spurred to Newton to the south.
Abilene is most famous for the Eisenhower Presidential Library, but I wasn't there for 20th century history just yet. Abilene's Old Cow Town is a joke, much like Dodge City's joke of a "tourist attraction". The treasure of Abilene for this trip was the American Indian Art Center. I've never seen such a selection of books about veritably every tribe in North America. In the least, every region had selections on the shelves. I could have bought at least 50 books in this place and still have a bunch I wish I'd bought. The art and jewelry selections were cool too and my wife bought a decorative piece. I must return there next year, hopefully. Maybe next time I'll visit the Eisenhower Library.
The final weekend of our journey took us to Clay Center, not far from the Nebraska border. From there, we traveled to Concordia to see the National Orphan Train museum, dedicated to remembering the estimated 200,000 children shipped to the Plains and middle America from the east along the train corridors. It was a sad place, but offered the stories of their finest successes. Many of the featured orphans survived a hundred years of life and relatively happy lives. However, the museum didn't avoid the failures, such as the children returned to the benevolence organizations which placed them for ridiculous offenses, such as reaching for a handful of jelly from a cellar, or childless couples who adopt a child, then return the child once they conceive their own offspring. The next day, we visited Manhattan on game day against Mizzou. I always love visiting Aggieville and visited the Dusty Bookshelf, where my wife's father would buy his western fictions. I found a few good books about Nebraska and not a single Kansas Historical Quarterly. I was hoping to score a number of valuable historical periodicals on Kansas history, as I find a good selection of used Arkansas Historical Quarterly periodicals at Dickson Street Bookstore here in Fayetteville. It's always fun to visit Manhattan and game day with some much needed rainfall in the region made for a good day, plus my wife's sister and Bob wanted to try the Cozy Inn slider joint franchised in Manhattan, I suppose. The Salina Cozy Inn didn't mention the location at Aggieville, so more oniony burgers, don't even ask for a cheeseburger, for the week.
The trip back to Fayetteville took us through Emporia, again. We visited my wife's mother before our return. We bought a lot of books and enjoyed the visit to the Flint Hills and the Plains. The only sad commentary was the discovery that Tallgrass Prairie had scrapped their bookstore, although they were building a new visitor center and we were told the new gift shop wouldn't be the bookstore they once had. I love that site, but I'm disappointed. At least Town Crier, a bookstore in downtown Emporia, had some of the selection the Prairie once offered. Much fun. I love this state, as I love every state I have visited over the years. Some states I enjoy more than others, but I always manage to find something good about a place to overcome the shortcomings. Can't wait for my next trip next spring. Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama are likely places for that week of travel.
