Sunday, 18 October 2020
On our way out of the Cheney campground, I took this photo.
The campground calls these shelters "toadstools." A new one on me.
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| today's route |
On the road
I knew this route I'd wrested from Google wouldn't take long, so I took my time and didn't worry about trying to drive the speed limit on these rural roads. The one concession I made for my peace of mind was checking with Google's aerial view to be sure all the roads I'd chosen were paved. Which they weren't so I picked out other roads that were.
I stopped at a local grocery store in Cheney and, despite it being pretty small, I was able to find most of what I wanted.
As usual, on the drive I found roads that weren't labeled with any names at all that Google said they'd be labeled, so some of the drive was on an I-hope basis, but it ended up working out.
Despite the names of towns being shown on the map, after I left Cheney I didn't see an actual town until I got to Harper. One of the non-towns I went through was Rago, which is where a farmer named Clyde Cessna became the first person between the Mississippi and the Rockies to build and fly his own airplanes. That was in 1911. For a company that was successful enough to become a household name, it's turned out to have a surprisingly negative history. Odd how things happen. Here's the Wikipedia link if you're curious. https://en.wikipedia.org/Cessna
I drove through cropland, as you'd expect, and past a wind farm. I came across lots of cotton and a peach orchard, though I don't associate peaches with Kansas.
We stopped in a parking lot across from the school in Harper, so the dogs could get a walk and we could have some lunch. They've got some kind of oak tree planted by the school that produces the biggest acorns I've ever seen. Actually, I wouldn't have noticed but both Gracie and I were having trouble walking on them because they were so big. I don't know why Dext didn't have trouble too, though nothing much fazes him. Huge acorns at least an inch across, I'd guess.
A sign in Harper said it's the site of "historical Runnymede church." To me, Runnymede means Magna Carta, which I was pretty sure wasn't what this church was about. And now that I've looked it up, I can say it wasn't. Runnymede here in the US was, in 1888, a planned community for wealthy UK folks to send their sons to be "gentleman farmers." It didn't last but a few years. The church was moved to Harper in 1893 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It's an Episcopal church and I think it's still being used.
I passed a sign saying I could get to Freeport if I turned right and went down some unpaved roads. Why do even completely landlocked states like Kansas have towns called Freeport?
I was curious, actually, and looked it up and learned that until 2017, Freeport was the smallest incorporated city in Kansas. By a vote of 4-0 (there are only 5 residents there), the city was dissolved. The post office there has been operating since the town was founded in 1885. Sometime I'd like to come back and take those gravel roads down to Freeport.
I twice crossed the Chikaskia River (emphasis on the 2nd syllable) and have learned it runs through northern Oklahoma and flows into the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River. I remember that river because of it flowing through the Great Salt Plains Lake, where I stayed at the state park when I was in OK.
And on to the relatively large town of Wellington (pop. 8,100), where I'm staying at the KOA for 2 nights.
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