It must have cooled down quite a bit last night as the A/C was not running when we woke up. After breakfast we decided to head out for a day trip to Great Bend, about 100 miles away. There was a quilt walk that Lyn had read about that described the life of early settlers and their quilting patterns. There was also a pioneer type village that sounded interesting. To top it all off we could get there and back on a scenic drive.
As we headed south the sky ahead of us got darker and darker, but that wasn’t a worry as the scenery was superb as we passed through some Kansas Mountains.
A few miles further south we made a 90 degree left turn and the weather ahead looked much better, although about 20 minutes later the radio programme was interrupted with an Emergency Broadcast Message warning of severe thunderstorms and hail to the south of us. As we were heading east we weren’t too concerned, beside we had the sights of the scenic byway to look at.
The area was generally crop farming, with a few cattle herds added in. In addition there were a number of small oil wells in many of the fields, I guess this provided supplementary income to the farmers?
Below are a couple of general views that we took along the way.
The bad weather stayed to the south of us…….. until we got about 10 miles from our destination, then the rain started. The good news was that the temperatures had stayed cool, 21C by the time we hit Great Bend. As the rain was a little too heavy for walking, especially as we had left jackets and hats in the trailer (remember it was sunny and warm when we left) we went for a coffee. The rain began to ease off so we headed off to see the quilt walk. Unfortunately the quilt walk was on the same par as Kansas Mountains and Kansas Scenic Routes, just a tad underwhelming. There were four “quilts” inset into paving stones at four corners of a park surrounding the court house, no explanations, no history….. nothing to even acknowledge them.
The Courthouse:
Next stop, the “pioneer” village. We didn’t even stop there, as we drove by we could see it was a group of less than a dozen buildings lined up along the edge of the street, many of them appeared to be closed up.
We found a place for a late lunch, then decided to head back. About 10 miles out of town the rain stopped, the sky’s cleared and the temperature climbed slowly from 21C to 31C. I guess Great Bend wasn’t to keen on us visiting!
NOTE:
No tongues or cheeks were hurt in the writing of this blog.