Roadside Kansas: Day 4

From one post to another, we began Day 4 in wonderful Hays, Kansas. With time on our hands (we believed the Ellis Railroad Museum opened at 11 A.M,) we awoke from our Sleep Inn, ate breakfast, and headed for the Fort Hays State Historic Site on the Southwest side of Hays.

While most of the buildings were sold for scrap, a few remaining structures still stand at historic Fort Hays, an important resource base for pioneers and the U.S. military as the United States expanded West.

As the fort would have looked near the end of its service to this country.

In one of the two preserved officer's quarters.

Replica of the Officer's two-holer.

The common man's bed - on this structure, four men would have slept.
Most of what is left at Fort Hays. The main building is being renovated, so this first house serves as the welcome center and gift shop. Pretty neat!

We departed Hays west on Ole' 40, and it was only a few minutes to Ellis, Kansas - a city named after the county that was named after a civil war General (Gen. Ellis, obviously) who never came anywhere near Ellis or Hays. We searched the immediate area where we arrived, yet found no Railroad museum until we asked. We did, however, find the local High School sports stadium. The mascot is the Ellis Railroaders (or Railers). I think I'd fit in quite nicely here.

The museum is staffed by one person who took our money and gave us a tour. She was very knowledgeable about the area's deep railroading history and was easy to listen too. The museum itself consists of four rooms dedicated to the history of Railroads in Ellis and around the area, including great information on several branch lines and how they operated. A model of the old Ellis rail yard is also on display - It used to be home to a roundhouse, shops, a railroad hotel, a depot, and numerous other railroad facilities. Now, the UP Kansas Pacific line plus the grain elevator is all that is left of a once thriving rail industry. The museum also has a large model railroad layout, which our guide started via remote control. She said the exhibit is kept up by some local rail buffs who come in and work a little on it each weekend, which is typical of a small town museum like this one: Lots of volunteer hours, especially at a community-owned attraction like this, which on some days has only one or two visitors.

Its a testament of good community building that such a town can maintain a high standard of museum with so little in terms of resources.

How Ellis looked in its Railroad Heydey. Made important by the railroads as it was roughly halfway between Kansas City and Denver. Now, Ellis sees no more than a few coal trains and the occasional grain train through its yard.

Outside, a Union Pacific caboose is on display, as well as a 1/3 scale, One mile+ miniature train. Run by a volunteer every few hours, the train circles the loop a few times, depending on the attitude of the driver (ours seemed to be in a pretty good mood). However, the next departure was at One, and we were hungry as it was just after noon. Our wonderful museum guide recommended Kevy Lee's, a diner fairly close to the Interstate. So, we drove up there and found the place surrounded by large trucks and other vehicles- generally a good sign of great food.

We were not disappointed. There was hardly a seat in the house, but we grabbed a table and looked at the menu. Dad ordered a Sausage and Cheese Omelet and I, a very good sized double cheeseburger. If you go (which you should,) remember to ask for the "Western" fries, as they are fresh-cut, skin-on potatoes and they are excellent! The burger was good and the prices were reasonable ($5-7 a plate).

One O'clock rolled around and It was time to catch the train, so we drove back downtown to the museum, parked, and saw the train, still sitting there unattended. We went back inside and paid our fare for the train with the museum attendant, and soon enough our volunteer engineer was in the parking lot.

Our tickets were three dollars apiece, and our driver, after waiting for a few minutes to build up some air pressure, took us through the woods and down to the creekside three times. The train, he said, is kept up by two volunteers who are constantly trying to improve it. Years of disrepair and abuse have made the train a challenge to keep maintained.

The train was built in the 50s or 60s by Ottoway Amusements, the same company that does many county fairs (and the rides at the State Fair in Hutchinson). Our Engineer knows of two other trains of this model still operating. He believes seven or eight of this model were built total.

After three revolutions around the track, it was time to head on. Ellis is a great little town, and it will certainly be a stop on my next trans-Kansas roadtrip to Colorado to stop in at the diner or Museum again, just for fun.

However, it was time to get on the road again! We headed West on I-70 to Oakley, then south to Gove County. This 100 mile drive was a great chance for me to fall asleep and let Dad do the driving, which he enjoys. I was pleased to wake up to find ourselves a few miles from the famous geologic formations called the Monument Rocks (Sometimes known as the Chalk Pyramids).

You know the drill. Click the image for a larger version.

These rocks are gigantic! The stark color contrast between the beautiful, wide expanse of Kansas sky and the huge rocks on the wide open Kansas plain... all this needs is a little context!





Could have taken a hundred pictures here, or spent my time wandering in and around the towering structures, but it was over 106 degrees! Too hot, but also too beautiful. This is truly a Kansas must-see, non-touristy attraction.
We departed the beautiful monument rocks, headed south on US-83 towards Garden City. Somewhere along the way, we realized that, in order to swim in the World's Largest Outdoor Concrete Swimming Pool we would need... a towel. Silly unprepared travelers... We stopped in at a Dollar General in Scott City and picked up a pair, then headed south to the pool, with the assistance of "Gabs," the GPS.

We found it! But...

Awww......

Feeling rather depressed about the big pool not being open (Perhaps school begins earlier here), we headed across the street to the Lee Richardson Zoo, which is free for Pedestrians. Those in cars can pay to drive around the extensive zoo. The main pedestrian entrance is this impressive archway.

Look what I found! A train! This locomotive plied a local short line near Garden City, hauling Sugar Beets to a factory, well into the 1950s. Nicknamed Ole' Two Bits, its power was favored over a diesel replacement. Now, the line is one of two short line railroads still operating in Kansas, but unfortunately Ole' Two Bits has been retired.
A map of this very large zoo.
The elephants (background) are known to swim in the big pool when it closes at the end of the summer. The rhino was pretty cool, too.
Sloth bears.
The Zoo had a very cool "Big Cats" exhibit, but this was my favorite. The puma/cougar/mountain lion - what have you - had the sweetest meow and would follow you around like it wished you to pet it. Very cute! The Lion pride was also very interesting and the Lions had great personalities.

A storm soon rolled in, and it was time to go. We refilled our drink cups, headed south past Sublette, Kansas (and numerous feed lots), and headed into Liberal.

We stayed at the Liberal Inn, an older hotel that had a good price and a heart-shaped pool. Dad and I went down and shared it with a group of kids visiting from Amarillo. We ate at the "Branding Iron," the hotel lounge and restaurant. I had a steak and dad the catfish, which we both thought was excellent food. We've yet to come across any bad food so far, with the possible exception of the snack bar at Wednesday's Pioneer Village. We were pretty exhausted after Day four, and I still didn't get much blog updating done.

Similarly, I'm now in Wichita at the airport Hilton. I suppose another two days worth of updating will have to be done tomorrow night!

Roadside Kansas: Day 3

Boy, is the week going fast!

Dad and I are sitting in the "Liberal Inn," and it is not the end of Day three, but the end of Day four. The reason I am writing this post tonight is because my silly little netbook was unable to connect to the wireless network at last night's hotel.

Regardless, we tried the Microtel in Kearney, NE. It was pretty good and had a decent breakfast, but we were on our way fairly early Wednesday morning to "See How America Grew." (R) (Tm)

Pioneer Village is, as they say on all the publication materials, Nebraska's #1 attraction. According to the records posted on the wall, at its peak in the mid 70's, the attraction drew about 175,000 people annually, which amounts to around 485 people daily. They stopped posting figures after 1994, when it drew about 90,000 a day. A good estimate for this year's attendance would be, liberally, 70,000. 194 people, daily, maybe.

Sitting mostly empty on the site is a 300 seat restaurant and a 90(!) room hotel. The hotel looked pretty empty and the restaurant looked closed so we didn't eat there (but it was actually open, which means that cook was pretty bored that day). But never fear! Harold Warp, the famed and revered founder of Pioneer Village, put all three: Pioneer Village, the restaurant, and hotel, into a non-profit organization (foundation) so that he may "ensure that the entire collection may be preserved for generations to come."

And it is huge.

In addition to this quaint little one-room schoolhouse where I pretend to be paying attention (yeah right), Mr. Warp has acquired a log cabin, church, working steam locomotives & a depot, another schoolhouse, a sod house, and more. The entire complex spans over 27 buildings! Most of them are pretty big, also.

This is Harold's vision of your average 1950s living room. He has a living room, kitchen, and bedroom from every twenty years going back to the early 1800s. It is impressive.

Pioneer Village has over 300 cars. That may sound like a mediocre amount, but let me tell you. Its a LOT of Internal Combustion Engines. Entire product lines from Chevy, Ford, Buick - Everything. He's got cars from the 1890s, horse carts, electric cars, steam cars, trucks, Everything. Three buildings (or more) full, two-levels, row upon row of cars, and here is a taste:

Panoramic images of the main circle of buildings, please click on them to expand them. The museum brags you can walk less than a mile and see everything. I'm pretty sure we walked more than a mile and we still didn't see everything, but the circular flow does seem to help the design of the place.

This rug, which reminded dad of a rug his grandmother Walter had in her bedroom, gave us a small obsession over braided rugs for the next few days.

I have to be selective with the pictures I use here, because none can capture the enormity of this collection. As the adage goes, you "have to see it to believe it."

The city of Minden, which is famous for its Christmas lights, has a wonderful town square and beautiful courthouse, just south of the BNSF railway tracks.

My dad told me this story his father (my grandpa). One Thanksgiving, he drove a group of his friends to Minden to see the lights. They got there, and found to their great disappointment that the lights were not turned on yet. My grandpa was famous for being able to strike up a good conversation with just about anyone, and soon enough he found the person to talk to, who happily turned on the lights at the courthouse just for them.

So, after a nice visit to the town square and listening to the Carillon music that reverberated around the square from the courthouse, we left placid little Minden, south through Alma (NE), and into Phillipsburg, where we were thirsty and I hungry. We stopped at the only chain restaurant thus far, a subway. It was refreshing enough and got us down US 183 through Stockton and Plainville (home of US congressman Jerry Moran) to Hays, Kansas - our nightly stop.

But, there was still plenty of daylight, and we made good use of it by visiting the Sternberg Museum of Natural History. Situated just off I-70, we have passed it dozens of times yet never stopped. This time, we made it a priority and I am sure glad we did - its a wonderful Kansas museum.

The first thing we did was visit a Kansas History Exhibit. It illustrated Oceanic Kansas during the Tertiary period of Earth's history, around 500 million years ago. Kansas was, at one time, covered in an ocean, so the exhibit has you climb into the underwater world of Kansas' past. Gigantic fish, whale-like dinosaurs, and your average plankton once were the eat-or-be-eaten wildlife of the Kansas' plains. After the floodgates at Tuttle Creek Lake were opened during the flood of 1993, a different kind of flood came to the lake in the form of scrounging geologists, who found numerous prehistoric, oceanic fossils in the Kansas sedimentary limestone. Also, I found some shark's teeth there on a field trip with my geology class sophomore year.

We then ascended into more recent times, some 200 million years ago before the last major ice age - the age of the dinosaurs. It was pretty cool. But remember,

Do not feed the dinosaurs - (Duck and cover).

The animitronic was pretty scary, but in reality, the Sternberg Museum once made T-Rex history, by Fort Hays researchers discovering the first complete T-Rex fossil skeleton in Wyoming. Named Lucy, the dino was displayed at the Sternberg Museum first, causing quite the upsurge in Hays' dino tourism industry.

Outside the entrance to the exhibit, the world's most photographed fossil, the "Fish within a fish," is displayed. It was found in Kansas!

We also saw this living fossil, the American Aligator, waiting in a tank looking very cute. We just missed the "Supercroc" exhibit, a fossil of a prehistoric, dinosaur-age fossil of a crocodile over 35 feet(!!!) long. We watched the better part of a two-hour documentary on Supercroc which was playing the museum's small theater, making me go back upstairs to get a picture of this little fella.

-
Prehistoric dog.
Prehistoric cat. (Nice kitty, kitty, kitty!)

Also on display is a neat "Discovering Paleontology" exhibit, with many unique fossils and artifacts. They even had a mammoth's foot, tooth, and jaw, which I wish I would have taken pictures of. However, that Supercroc movie ate up a lot of time, and it was time to go. We browsed the gift shop, and left to go do... other things.

The first other thing we did was find a house dad believes he stayed at over a summer while his mom (my grandmother) went to school at Fort Hays State. We believe we found it, but for the sake of the current owner's privacy I wont post a picture here. It also may not be the correct house, but dad is pretty sure. Nearby was this great pedestrian bridge linking two sides of campus, which spans "Big Creek."

We also stumbled upon this beautiful United Methodist Church.

We ate dinner at a place called "JD's Country Style Chicken." The chicken and beef were excellent. Dad and I both ordered sides of grilled onions because they were offered. Delicious! It was located in an old fast-food restaurant, but we were hoping for a sit-down experience which we found. The modifications to a sit-down restaurant were minimal, but the experience and service was great and We'll probably be back sometime we're in Hays.

Visited the Hays Regional Airport and its wonderful airport terminal to look for Rans Corporation's manufacturing building. Rans makes the bike my dad owns, as well as ultralight and sport aircraft. We found a small building with the Rans logo on it, but no Manufacturing building (which, in pictures we've seen, is much larger).

Hays (HYS) is served five times daily to Denver (DEN) by Great Lakes Airlines on 19-seat turboprops. Similar service was provided at Manhattan by the same airline until April of 2010, when American Eagle began providing three daily flights to Dallas, unsubsidized.

However, this is a wonderful air terminal. Lots of cars in the lot, which is a good sign of better service to come, perhaps.

Dad knew of a new church that went up in the 1980s and also knew the priest, who transferred here from Manhattan to begin the new Parish. We visited and poked our heads in. It was getting dark, but it was a beautiful contemporary church.

Accommodations for the night were provided by Sleep Inn, a new hotel brand for us. It was a pretty standard room, however the internet access didn't work, and I am now finishing up this post at the end of Day five in Wichita!