Our Travel Blog

Forty five minutes after getting up we were on a way at 7:15. The GPS showed 508 miles to destination, and as about 200 miles was on non-Interstate I was planning on 11-11.5 hours, including breaks. In reality the non-Interstate roads were mostly 4-lane with very few towns to slow us down. We arrived at out destination in Lake Village Arkansas after 9 hours 55 minutes; I was impressed, and more importantly I wasn’t tired. The truck behaved perfectly despite the temperature reaching 34C at times, admittedly we started out at 900 ft above sea level, climbed to 1700 ft and back down to 150 ft, so there wasn’t too much hill climbing involved.

Time to get a bit of (hot humid) fresh air and exercise, then some dinner.

Again it was overcast when we woke up and the humidity was still with us. By mid afternoon we reached about 30C with a humidex 5-10 degrees above that.

This morning was spent getting things cleaned up and put away as this is the last day of our long trip as far as touring is concerned. The next few days will just be driving to get home, albeit via a rather circuitous route.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day with just over 800km to drive to Lake Village Arkansas, the following day we head down to Foley, Alabama where we will spend two nights then a 3 day drive back to Ottawa. There may or may not be blogs on that trip, there probably won’t be too much to say, but I will write a wrap up blog, probably next Monday.

This afternoon we braved the heat and humidity and went for a 1.75 mile walk to pick up two more geo-caches. After that it was back to the trailer and more tidying up and dismantling ready for an early start tomorrow.

It rained most of the night, but had stopped by wake-up time. Although it was a lot cooler, around 17C, the humidity was up around 95%+. The forecast for the day was not the best, we had a couple of things lined up but nothing really unique or “must see”. We discussed what we should do, and we both came to the conclusion that we are “traveled out”!

I guess I’ve been feeling this way for a week or so now, but I seem to have infected Lyn as well! I think in general two things have contributed to this, the hot weather and the loss of great scenery since we left Colorado. I think in my case there was a third element, the problems with the truck, for a while I was reluctant to get in the beast for fear of what would go wrong next. Hopefully now we have come down from the mountainous roads and overly hot temperatures that should no longer be an issue.

Today we sat around reading, Sudokuing(!), and for the most part doing very little. I did spend some finalising my list of the stuff I have in the trailer, and what needs to be taken back and forth from home. I also caught up on some banking and other mundane chores.

Tomorrow will be much the same, if the weather cooperates we will head off to the local town for the 4th of July celebrations in the evening (free fireworks!).

As forecast, it started to rain overnight and continued throughout the morning with occasional thunder and lightning thrown in for good measure.

After breakfast we headed out towards Baldwin City about 40 miles north west for train trip. Unfortunately it won’t be a steam train, they are getting harder and harder to find.

Just after we started out the  rain began to ease, but according to radar that was just the eye of the storm, there was more precipitation to come. As I have mentioned before many of the fields around here have oil wells in them, the local ones seem to be miniature versions of ones we have seen previously, standing only about 6 ft high.

As you can see there are crops planted all around the well. In some fields of mature corn you can just see the arm moving above the crops.

We reached the station about 30 minutes before the scheduled departure, there weren’t too many people around. The train pulled into the station, and we could see why, one engine, one carriage, one open air carriage and a caboose!

In total there were 16 passengers, probably not a money making trip, especially as there was a free ice-cream for each passenger to celebrate July 4th!

The coach was built in 1923

Although it was still raining out, it didn’t affect the trip too much, as this one was definitely a trip for riding on a train rather than looking at the scenery. A lot of the trip was through wooded areas, the rest was open fields.

Corn as far as the eye can see!

The window was a little damp, but as you can just make out we passed through Ottawa!

At the far end of the trip the engine disconnected, and went to the other end of the train to drag us back.

Overall, not the best trip we’ve been on, but there was little else to do on a day like today. Back at the station, the heavens opened up to great us as we stepped off the train.

After lunch we headed back to Paola to do our last weekly shop, then it was back to the trailer for the rest of the afternoon.

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!

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.

Ahhhhh.. Cooler temperatures, but an increase in humidity. I guess you can’t win them all.

We woke up to a sunny, but cooler day. It was tempting to switch off the A/C, but the outside humidity dictated otherwise. After breakfast we headed off to the local hardware store to get the fittings I needed for the plumbing job. Problem was, there was no hardware store, there was a closed down hardware store, but that wasn’t too much use! We came back to the trailer and searched the web for another store (who would have thought that getting plumbing fittings could be so difficult!)

The nearest store was in Paola, about 12 miles away, so off we headed. This area seems far more prosperous than recent places we have been to, many large houses on 1 acre + lots, with well kept grounds.

Finally …… success, I got the fittings I needed, in addition we discovered that Paola was an interesting old town town with a central square dating back to the mid 1800’s. It also has a well known BBQ shack… we’ll be going back.

After lunch I installed the new faucets while Lyn went to do the laundry, evidently this is the cheapest place we have discovered on this trip at $2.25 to wash and dry the load.

We took a wander around the campsite, which seems to have a mixture of semi-permanent residents and weekly visitors with very few one nighters.

The grounds are quite well laid out, despite the Kansas heat, with flower gardens and a large fishing pond / lake.

Late afternoon was spent sitting under the awning as a thunderstorm tracked by us! Tomorrow we’re off for a tour around the tri-State area of Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.

We seem to have got this packing up down to a fine art now, within 45 minutes of falling out of bed we were on the road.

Today’s destination was Louisburg Kansas, on the Kansas – Missouri border.

The day started off nice and cool at around 21C. The sky ahead looked quite black and threatening, but we never caught up with the bad weather although the roads were wet in places.

The trip today was mostly downhill, literally. For the first time in a couple of months we descended below 1000 ft. There were a number of wind farms along the I-70, given the way the wind was always blowing at the campground, they must produce a fair amount of electricity.

The scenery changed from large wheat and corn fields to gently rolling, wooded hills. About 350 kms of the trip was Interstate and the remaining 150 kms on smaller, but straight roads.

We arrived at the campground around 2 PM, and the truck surpassed itself, not a single problem the whole day!!

Unlike the previous campground, this one was pretty full when we arrived, I think it is going to be more tourist traffic than itinerant.

We also seem to be a bit closer to civilisation, perhaps I’ll get the new kitchen taps in tomorrow!

Again a coolish night, no problem sleeping.

After breakfast I headed out to the local hardware store to pick up the fittings I needed to install the new faucets. Well that was an exercise in futility, the store had nothing that could even be cobbled together to get the required end result.

Back at the trailer Lyn was busy quilting, so I played computer programmer for a while.

The weather forecasters here aren’t too bad at forecasting the weather, but leave a lot to be desired when it comes to forecasting the temperature. Again we reached up into the low 90’s. I think the heat has been one of the reasons we have been happy to hang around here and do very little, another reason is that there is very little to do.

Some kids had the audacity to take over “our” swimming pool (we’re usually the only people in the campground in the early afternoon) playing a noisy game of Marco Polo. We gave the pool a miss!

I started packing up a lot of the outside stuff in preparation for an early morning departure tomorrow. The next campground will be the last on this trip except for 2 days in Alabama which will be the new permanent home for the trailer. Hopefully the next week will see a little more activity in the touring department.

A cool night last night, down to 18C at one stage. We managed to leave the A/C off all night and most of the morning.

In keeping with the idea that this stop is a “vacation within a vacation”, nothing was planned for today, and likely not for tomorrow either!

Lyn continued working on her quilt, and I started on installing the new faucets. I got the old ones out without too much bother, installed the new ones and went to connect them up….. whoops, different fittings, they won’t connect. No problem, off to the local hardware store, they’re bound to have what I need. They almost certainly had the right fittings, but being deep in the heart of darkest rural Kansas the shop was well and truly closed, this being a Sunday. Back to the trailer, take out the new faucets, put in the old ones, pretend nothing happened and wait until tomorrow!

After lunch we headed out for a walk, we decided to see if we could find the cache that eluded us the other day. After 30 seconds of searching we found it. We managed to get a 1.5 mile walk in, which is the first lengthy walk for a couple of weeks due to the heat.

Back at the campground we went over to the pool before the itinerant hoards arrived and had the place to ourselves.

There was one other group that stayed for the day, they were in a rather sophisticated tent. Not the best picture as it was in the shade.