Best Western Townsman Motel Larned

... of the day...

Great photo sessions with Ryan while we pulled over to see this crazy old set of barns. These barns had deteriorated in a really great way. The one we went in was definitely used as a grain mill or tower/silo. We could see through the grates in the ground down like 20 feet and up into the inside for over 3 floors. Inside there was the belts and mechanisms, like a grain elevator, used to take the crop (which we don ...

The Tallgrass Prairie once covered 140 million acres of North America. The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve was established in 1996 to preserve, protect, and interpret the less than four percent of remaining tallgrass prairie ecosystem. The 10,894 acre preserve ...

Although Mushroom Rock State Park is the smallest state park in Kansas, it's the most interesting. The Park has Dakota sandstone concretions. There are many concretions in this Park, but some of it still remains and has been supporting three of the rocks for many years.

The resulting combination of rocks have a mushroom shape. The unusual shapes caught the imaginations of the Native Americans and pioneers, some of whom have left graffiti in softer sandstone.

Fort Larned NHS:

Fort Larned was established on the vast prairie in Western Kansas midway along the Santa Fe trail in 1859 to protect mail coaches, freighters and other Trail traffic from Plains Indians. With nine beautifully restored buildings, Fort Larned is the best preserved Indian Wars military post on the Santa Fe Trail. As the site of an Indian Agency, Fort Larned also was instrumental in maintaining friendly relations with Plains Indians. In July 1978, six years ...

Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected the 34th President of the U.S. He served two terms – 1952 to 1961. He was elected President primarily because of his military accomplishments. President Roosevelt designated Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander. As such, Eisenhower's duties were to direct and coordinate all military efforts to end tyranny in WWII. He successfully commanded the Allied invasion of northern Europe and brought an end to WWII ...

... Exposition) inspired L. Frank Baum to create “Emerald City” in the Wizard of Oz. The Columbian Theatre is located in Wamego, Kansas and houses many original paintings and other artifacts from the 1893 World’s Fair.

This Museum was the most disappointing site we visited since we began our cross country trip. We would not recommend that anyone go out of their way to visit this museum.

It is hard to believe that it is July already! Kansas is beautiful in it's own way, the vast farms are truly the bread basket of the world. When we are riding we see structures that tower above everything else and they are grain silos. It seems each town has their own coop and they work together. We rode from ...

it is here where we first started doing the work we came here for, harvesting wheat. this place is really humid in the summer time and wet as well, Anthony is in heart of Americas largest wheat growing state Kansas, and in the country that grows the most wheat in Kansas.

There won't be a lot of pictures today - Don likes to sit back while I drive. Today was quite an experience! The pace is not slow and we are travelling secondary road that thankfully have minimal traffic. We occasionally meet other vehicles with oversized loads which proves interesting but for the most part it is steady going. for those of you with a map handy, we continue south on I ...

... tomorrow night it will be warm enough that Scooter and I can camp out instead of moteling it. We should end up somwhere around Joplin, MO tomorrow night, having seen the Tall Grass Prairie National Preserve by Strong City, and then south to the Little House on the Prairie Wayside which is south west of Independence, KS, and what ever other interesting stops along the way happen to catch my eye on the way to Joplin. Adios for tonight, from Pat and Scooter.