Some more rain overnight, but a sunny start to the day. After breakfast we headed south to Fort Scott, Kansas. This is the location of an old fort that was established back in the 1840’s along the “permanent Indian line”, basically Indians to the West and “Americans” to the East. As the Americans pushed further west, the fort was no longer needed and most of the military based there were sent off to fight the Mexicans who were a little upset that Texas had just been taken from them.
The fort is now designated a National Historical Site and has been renovated. Below are some general views.
The Laundry Room
Laundry Room and Officers Houses
Quilt
Kitchen (playing with camera)
Just across the street from the fort is downtown Fort Scott. There are some interesting buildings, but unfortunately most of them are now empty.
Our next stop was Big Brutus, on the way there we drove through some countryside that was very reminiscent of England, rolling hills and green fields. Compared with where we have been recently, the countryside around here is very lush and green.
Back to Big Brutus, the worlds largest electric shovel, used at a coal mine. It was constructed in 1962, and transported to Kansas in kit form by rail. It required 150 rail cars to transport it. Big Brutus stands 160ft tall weighing in at 11 million pounds or 4.99 million kgs. The boom is 150 ft long and the bucket can hold 90 cu yds of coal, that’s enough to fill 3 rail cars. Big Brutus can crawl along at 0.22 mph.
It only was used until 1974 when it no longer became economical to mine coal at the site. At that time it was considered too big to move and so was left in place.
Next stop is a little unique, its a point where three State boundaries (Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma meet). In addition we get to visit Oklahoma for the first time.
It took about 3 seconds to walk around the monument and walk through 3 States!
Above is an Oklahoma mountain; actually it is a large pile of sand at the side of the roads and rainfall has shaped it. It looked pretty convincing in the photo though! After a little geo-caching in Oklahoma we crossed into Missouri and drove through the city of Joplin.
Mural in Joplin
A few more caches in Missouri and we headed back towards the trailer. As we’d been out most of the day, we decided we’d head over to Paola and the BBQ shack we saw yesterday for dinner, A good choice.