Again, cool overnight and blue skies and sunshine this morning. As you can see below there is one small Canadian flag at the campsite! We were expecting a lot of hoop-la in the way of American flags and bunting in celebration of July 4th, but there is noting evident here or in the surrounding area.
This morning we headed off for some exercise in the form of a walk to the local Rutlader cemetery. Why the cemetery, obviously because there is a cache there. We have got very little exercise recently, and really need to get back into the routine. Now the temperatures are cooler (sub 32C /90F) the thought of walking is a little more appealing.
Rutlader is the “town” we are staying in, it has a rather weird history:
As you enter the “town” and look in front of the Outpost Store you will see the town sign “Rutlader: Population 11” In 1990, Jimmie Rutlader and his late brother Joseph gave 125 acres to the State of Kansas with a promise from state officials they would put Rutlader on the map.
The donated land is now the Rutlader Wildlife Area. Although the “town” still bears a Louisburg, KS mailing address. This didn’t stop Jimmy Rutlader from installing his own sign and make his lifelong dream come true, he built his own town complete with a public cemetery.
One and a half miles later we had the cache, and some exercise. Back at the trailer I started listing which electronics /computer stuff stays in the trailer, and which goes home. I have done this a few times and have either lost the list, or not trusted it and brought a whole lot of stuff down I don’t need. Hopefully this will be the definitive list!
After lunch we headed out to an old “Cider Mill” which has been producing cider for 120 years (Brits… don’t get excited, Cider this side of the pond is missing one vital ingredient… alcohol). There were both the original press, and the more modern electrically powered hammer press. Leaving the Cider Mill, we headed back to Louisburg as we hadn’t actually been to the core area. We hadn’t missed too much, there was a large food store, and we finally found another hardware store, but it didn’t have the fittings I had been looking for earlier. There was also the mandatory auto-parts store – in fact there were two in the town!
Back at the trailer we just lounged around, doing very little! The temperatures moderated enough that by late afternoon we could switch off the A/C and open up all the windows and door. Unfortunately the cool comes before a very wet day forecast for tomorrow when we have tickets booked on a train ride up near Kansas City. Hopefully we are not in open air carriages!