Flint Hills Adventure Route

[TripLeader]

Part 12 [Cottonwood Falls]

We drove into the town of Cottonwood Falls for dinner. But first we checked out the famous county courthouse and downtown.












Dinner that night was at the Grand Central Hotel.






It was a nice, classy place. Somehow they did not kick us out. We headed out after dinner to get back to the state lake.



We made our camp in the prime spot at the lake.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 13 [Homestead]

Bank accounts are red
Farmers are blue
If we go broke
So will you.

-Sign along U.S. Highway 56 in Kansas, between Conway and Windom, 1978


We broke camp the next morning in the chilly weather. Our first stop on day two was to be the old site of Homestead. The school still stood.



It was here we noticed the leak on the YJ.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 14 [Cedar Point]

The town, including the old mill, was a highlight of the trip.



Otherwise, the place was quickly heading toward becoming a ghost town.



'

 

[TripLeader]

Part 15 [Doctor W.B. Jones 1878]

Ad Astra Per Aspera (To the Stars through Difficulty)

-Kansas State Motto








The old house is a landmark.






"Doctor W.B. Jones 1878," reads the inscription above the upper window. The old story goes that he and his family moved out and headed to southeast Kansas three years later.



A bison ranch owned the pasture across the road.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 16 [Longhorns & the Art of Jeep Repair]

Kansas is not easily impressed. It has seen houses fly and cattle soar. When funnel clouds walk through the wheat, big hail falls behind. As the biggest stones melt, turtles and mice and fish and even men can be seen frozen inside. And Kansas is not surprised.

Henry York had seen things in Kansas, things he didn't think belonged in this world. Things that didn't. Kansas hadn't flinched.”

-N.D. Wilson, Dandelion Fire


Our Jeeps temporarily split ways. The YJ had been diagnosed with a leaking power steering reservoir. It needed attention. K. deviated off the route in search of fluid. He slipped off the route while we had close to a mile separation between us. We were out of cell phone coverage and beyond the distance our small radios could reach.

It wasn't hard to figure out what he was up to, as we had just previously been in discussion about auto parts stores in the area. But he had to book it sooner than later when the leak became worse.

I re-routed toward him, but I took the long way. It took me past these bovines.









We met back up in the town of Cassoday, after K. had found the closest place selling power steering fluid was an interstate highway service station only accessible from the Kansas Turnpike.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 17 [Teter Rock]

My husband was a farmer. But he could see beauty in the land. He could see the promise of the seed. Now he was no literary man, but he could almost make a poem out of a clod of dirt."

-Flosse Curtis, 1890-1983, Manhattan, Kansas


James Teter erected this rock along a highpoint in the 1870s or '80s. It's purpose was to guide pioneers to the Cottonwood River. The original rock was taken down for construction use in the nearby oil boom town of Teterville. The current rock was erected in the 1950s to recreate the original.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 18 [The Roadside Trailer Diner]

I always heard there were three kinds of suns in Kansas: sunshine, sunflowers, and sons-of-b*tches.

-Josey Wales, The Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976


We continued along our way. There was nothing else in the way of a restaurant. So we opened up our very own diner upon the side of the road.






Don't forget to tip your server.






The YJ's power steering fluid was topped off and then we continued along after dinner.



Another wild horse. This poor one was stuck on the road--fenced out of the pastures by barbed wire.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 19 [Ivanpah]

"O, dear this is a hard place to live, this Kansas is. I wonder what in the world will become of all of us, anyway."

-Anna Webber, Mitchell County, 1881


This old site was another highlight of the trip



It stood all by its lonesome.












The essence of the Flint Hills.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 20 [Onto the Campsite]

Hello Kansas wheatfield farmer,
Let me thank you for your time.
You work a forty hour week for a livin',
Just to send it on down the line.

-Alabama, Forty Hour Week (For a Livin')


Daylight was fading. We drove eastbound toward the Eureka City Lake.


I've never seen more deer in one place. I count 42 in the photo.



About to pack up from the city lake the next morning.

 

[SVTRIT]

I'd love to follow this route sometime. Kansas is one of my favorite places to drive across, though I have mainly done it via blacktop.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 21 [The Old Bridge]

We topped off the power steering fluid in the YJ right before we left the campsite.


Our first stop that day was the old bridge. It was out of service and paralleled the new bridge.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 22 [Piedmont]

"When we have rain and crops, we don't want to go, and when there ain't no crops we're too poor to go; so I reckon we'll just stay here till we starve to death."

-John Ise, Sod and Stubble, 1936


We headed toward the next small town: Piedmont.






Piedmont had seen better days.



Many times you'll find a football field behind old high schools. Not here. That space was reserved for the rodeo grounds.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 23 [Rocky Road]

"Kansas mud is incomparable; in the mudline it is a perfect triumph--slippery as lard, adhesive as tar, cumulative as a miser's gold and treacherous as hope."

-John J. Ingalls,1858


We hit some mud on the roads after we left Piedmont. Enough to be concerning and to use 4WD out of caution. After that came some of the rockiest sections.






Another old house along the way.

 

[TripLeader]

Part 24 [No Aircraft Beyond this Point]

We reached the southern end for our trip at Beaumont. It wasn't the actual end of the FHAR at the Oklahoma line. But it was as far as we could get with the time we had. We hadn't known how far south we would make it when we began.

The story goes that a rich Wichita cattleman wanted to fly in and check his livestock back in 1948. The trouble was, there was not an airport nearby. The Wichita cattleman asked the townspeople of Beaumont if they would block off a street for him to land his small plane. Well, they thought it might be an interesting thing to see an airplane land in town. So they obliged. It became a thing, and there is still a grass landing strip next to the town today.






I've never seen a sign like this before on a city street.



In another oddity, the story of this airplane is completely out of place for being on display in an unincorporated small town in Kansas. It had been previously flown by Barry Seal. He was a convicted drug smuggler; said to have flown drugs out of South America. He was also said to have connections to the CIA. He was later played by Tom Cruise in the movie American Made.






Note the covered wagon glamping options behind the brick building.






Getting to the Oklahoma line on the FHAR will have to wait until another time...

 

[TripLeader]

Part 25 [Northbound]

The prairie is one of those plainly visible things that you can’t photograph. No camera lens can take in a big enough piece of it. The prairie landscape embraces the whole of the sky. Any undistorted image is too flat to represent the impression of immersion that is central to being on the prairie. The experience is a kind of baptism.”

-Paul Gruchow, Journal of a Prairie Year


We came up with a northbound route on the fly. We wanted to make our return journey on a different path.


The house was long gone. But the chimney still stood.