MoDayTrips: Day 1, Saturday July 5th - Warrensburg to Hill City

I left at 0635 this morning, heading out on my usual roads to US-50, heading towards Kansas City. My first tidbit was just west of Pittsville, a skeleton driving a Jeep. I got to the state line okay, without much problem. Traffic wasn't bad at all. I picked up K-10 on the west side of town.

K-10 was pretty. It was green and somewhat hilly, and part of it seemed to be a Kaw River Scenic Byway, or possibly the Kaw River national waterway trail nearby. As I passed Eudora, the rain started sprinkling. Later on, it picked up quite a bit. Lawrence has a water ski club that uses one of those borrow pit lakes that you see along the roads.

I'm now on US-40 west of Lawrence; it's still active in this area. Along the way I saw an 1880s Township Hall, and it started raining, and it started raining and it started raining. I got off go to Lecompton. Took a picture of the sign with my cell phone because I discovered that my camera was dead. Well, couldn't use that, so I pressed on & picked up US-24 to Manhattan.

First, I passed Topeka, where I saw the Dog Day Afternoon pet care. This area along US-24 is flat because it's part of the Kaw Valley, the wide valley with hills to our to the north. St Mary's, Kansas, has a farmer market, and they have a St Mary's University. That's before Manhattan, still on the California & Oregon Trails.

Now I'm getting into the Flint Hills as I leave this area. This area is four lane, and I passed a place called Central Rose fireworks. The bypasses around Topeka were pretty good. Some of it was 2-lane. It wasn't hilly. All this area is green. The only brown I saw was was the harvested wheat fields.

There was a lot of construction around Manhattan, with a major bypass. Since then, it's all been pretty good roads, and I stopped at Clay Center for gas. Clay Center is a pretty town. The Republican River is right on the west side and it was running at bank full. I started looking for a place to eat. In the next few towns I went through, I didn't find a Mexican place that was open, either. Finally, I stopped someplace and picked up a chicken sandwich at the Casey's. Well, it was chicken.

There's a silo tree approximately 10 miles east of Beloit, where all the buildings in towns seem to be made of yellow stone. Further on, at Glen Elder, I passed Wauconda lake. Further on, near Miltonvale, I passed a wind farm. This area is hilly. Land use alternates between corn and beans, and then it's grasslands, depending on the nature of the ground & how close to a river it is, I suppose this is the Solomon River in this area.

The road in this area is straight as straight can be. Actually it's a pretty darn lonely road most of the way after Clay Center. I got to Cawker city looked for the "World's Largest Ball of Sisal Twine." I can't find it. There's no big signs for it. I think it's right close to downtown, but I didn't see the right spot, so I pressed on.

I stopped at Nicodemus about two o'clock. This is a National Historic Site, and it's a historic Black settlement. They took up and moved from the South and bought their own land and formed their own town. Unfortunately, the railroad bypassed it, so the town kind of died on the vine a bit. People still live there, and now it's a National Historic Site, which just happened to be open today. I managed to tour a couple of the areas, but it was just brutally hot.

I left there about 2:30 and about 20 minutes later, I got to Hill City, checked into my motel, the Hilltopper motel. It's a single story, older motel but it's very nice. It has all the amenities, lots of power outlets, A/C, etc. The room is just a little small, but they've done a really nice job of update and keeping it current.