East of the Canal

A variety of points of interest lay east of the Kansas portion east of J.C. Hopper's Great Interstate Canal.  A slightly different path home offers a new view with every passing.

We slept well with the rain sprinkling over the Grain Bin Inn late overnight.  Looking out the next morning, you could see and smell that it had rained.  The air felt fresh and clean, but the earth remained parched from the summer drought this year.

Ellinwood, host of the annual After Harvest Festival, is but one of numerous little towns that dot the prairie.   Many of them cling to life, celebrating the highlights of their past through murals of more prosperous times.

A little further down the road, the Rice County Courthouse stands immediately and exactly in the center of the county, after beginning life in Atlanta.

The final resting place of this 1910 courthouse is Lyons, Some folks discovered Salt in 1887, while drilling for gas.  Not exactly what Vásquez de Coronado and his expedition were looking for in 1540, though it did enable the first major industry in the county.

Efforts by one of the architects of the Kansas capital building stands firmly in McPherson, showcasing his stonework designs leveraging Cottonwood Cotton limestone quarried just down the street in Strong City. Complete with Syrian arch, the then new 1893 courthouse, in this third and newer county seat, would preside over quieter times than its predecessors.

Before turning north, a break from the road found a one room schoolhouse loitering with a Mennonite Settlement Museum. The Kreutziger School formerly lived in a community by the same name near Canada, Kansas. As water filled the Marion Reservoir it formed an attraction with the museum complex located in Hillsboro.

That is the last thing we remember, just before joining the interstate.  When the drone of that became too much, we detoured again towards Lawrence, drifting off course.  We avoided conflict with the town itself, choosing a position to relax just south of there, near the Blue Mound of our ancestors, at Wells Overlook Park.  It is in a peculiar location, though appears well traveled and is the perfect jumping off point for backroads all the way into the city.