Adler's Midwest Meandering Spring 2021

 Today makes up for those days that we didn't have much to report.  We drove a loop up Hwy. 177 north, through some small towns and ended at Hwy. 50 at Strong City.  We took Hwy. 50 west to Hwy. 77 and south again to El Dorado, KS where we are camped in the state park.  It took us through the Flint Hills and Tall Grass Prairie Area, and it was a beautiful drive.  Again, we saw so many Redbud Trees blooming, and we spotted some Tulips in some yards.  We had seen Tulips before in Ponca City, so we are hoping when we get closer to Iowa that we will see them again.  The weather changed today, so maybe not, too.  I will answer some questions about geo-caching that we got overnight, before I post pictures of our day.  Geo-caching started on May 3rd of 2000 in the state of Oregon, so it has been nearly 21 years since then.  There is a plaque in that spot now, so no tangible cache.    The headquarters for geo-caching is in Seattle, but it is an international 'sporting event'.  There are between 3 and 4 million caches planted all over the world, and the membership for premium members was 472,892 in 2018.  I would think that many of you have them very close to where you live.  Some people use their Smart Phone to cache with, as they can buy the app for it.  We both have a GPS, as we feel they are more accurate, although Jim's sister, Barb has a Smart Phone and she sometimes finds it before we do. If you do a lot of caching with it, you need to get the battery pack and pouch so you don't run out of battery.  We are out some days for 6 or 7 hours.  We usually include a hike with it, as we enjoy hiking or biking and caching.  

Oh, yes!  It was a very fancy outhouse in its day!  We arrived in the little town of Cassoday, KS and we had this cache loaded on our GPS.  Thank goodness it wasn't near anything that drew attention to our roaming around in this area, although it was in town!  Our GPS' kept bouncing around and Jim said there were hornets 'in that little building', so he didn't go in.  After realizing that we hadn't found anything and THAT is the only thing left, I went in.  Sure enough, there it was.  It was a small ammo can in the corner, and the log book was inside.  This reminds us of the time we were charter members for the Outhouse Club!  I know 'Jean' is reading our blog and she and Sparky are members!  We installed them at the Dell's Polkafest one year.  That's another story! 

                                                  This says it all for Cassoday, Kansas.

A geo-cache brought us to the Cottonwood Falls dam area.  Many years ago, they had a mill here that was powered by the water, but that is all gone now, but it is still a pretty area.  The cache was just a small weatherproof bottle.  Most caches around here are home made and mostly pill bottles or the like. 

This hand-made garage was very close to the Cottonwood River and mill area, so we wondered if it may have been used by the mill workers at one time.  Notice the huge cement 'wheel' by the tree. 

I especially liked this old home that was built with the Cottonwood limestone, that is used so frequently in Kansas.  Our daughter went to grad school at K-State and the whole campus is built with that limestone.  It is very pretty.  The Redbud Trees were blooming at this home, also so that helped to attract me to it.  

 The stately courthouse is situated at the end of Main Street, and it is a beautiful building.  I would  have liked to have gone inside, but we kept going, as we knew our day wasn't even half over yet.  The courthouse was built in 1871-1873 and again, it was built out of the Cottonwood limestone.  It is the center of all things for the little town of Cottonwood Falls.  We enjoyed our stay here. 

We always like to see old restored railroad depots and I'm not sure if this is restored or a replica of the one in Strong City, KS.  The little town was known as the railroad city in its day.  It is on Hwy. 50.

The virtual cache at the Tall Grass Prairie National Preserve is what brought us here.  We didn't realize that this was that big of an attraction.  It was very interesting.  Notice the stone fence, as they had no trees when they built their fences to keep their cattle in, so they had to use the abundant Cottonwood limestone to make pedestals for fence posts and string their wire from that.  Many places had all stone fencing and there was a total of 30 miles of it on the 7,000 acre ranch.  The ranch was owned by Stephen F. Jones and it was called the Spring Hill Ranch.  

The three story barn was built in 1881 of the Cottonwood Limestone and was 60 feet wide x 110 feet long.  It was the second largest barn in Kansas.  

We would have liked to have gone into the mansion that Stephen Jones built for his family.  They do tours in the summertime, but they had workers there today doing some restoration of the yard and building.  The house has the year 1881 on it so that was when it was built.  It just looked so regal. 

The Fox Creek one-room schoolhouse was built in 1884 and was used until 1930.  All 8 grades of elementary schooling was conducted here.  It was built on the far end of the Jones' property.  So, that ends our day today.  It was most enjoyable.  We are 'collecting' counties in our travels as we are doing a challenge cache where we have to have a cache in connecting counties from Mexico to Canada.  With all of our meandering to and fro for 16 years, we have collected many of them.  We are just filling in the gaps now, on our way home.  We will need to go to the UP of MI this summer and finish our counties up there to complete the continuous string of counties. Now you can see how crazy this gets!  We have goals!