May 2021 Road Trip to Kansas Part Five of Five Series

Cheers! Part 5 is finally done!

Part 5 is Highway 18 - Wilson Lake- Lawrence - Tennessee

I know - I've taken way too long to get caught up with last May, but the last few months have been extraordinarily busy!

We start part 5 in Stockton. It's really strange not to have parents to visit here anymore. Or a reason to come back here anymore. There's no alumni association for 8th grade graduates - my high school is in a different town. We found a place to gas up the car just off Highway 183 - yep the same highway mentioned in part 3! 183 does play an important part in connecting points from my life. We drove to Plainville and turned left onto Highway 18.

I planned the Highway 18 route for one reason - to drive by the prettiest lake in Kansas, Wilson Lake. This highway also drifts southeasterly which was the direction we needed to go to get back onto I-70. 

I couldn't tell you the last time that I was this part of the highway to Lucas. But since I wasn't driving, I was able to observe. Around Codell, a high pointed ridge came in view from the passenger side. The highway basically followed this high ridge. And at Lucas, turning onto Highway 282, we had to cross that ridge to get to Wilson Lake. I just never saw that landscape in this way before -- the perks of not driving.

Wilson Lake is just stunning. An Army Corps dam on the Saline River creates the lake. The Dakota Sandstone is just brilliant in the sunlight. Yep - this is Kansas. I created a reel for my Instagram account from the video I took of Wilson and it racked up 1000 views in no time!

Wilson Lake

282 intersect I-70 at a desolate entrance ramp. We hopped onto I-70 East and towards our next destination: the Country Inn and Suites in Lawrence, KS. Going to Lawrence is like going to Holy Ground for me. The home of KU - the best education out of the four colleges/universities I attended. Mount Oread. Home Sweet Home to Me. My thesis is on the shelf in one of the KU libraries.

The hotel was by far the nicest hotel out of the five we had stayed at on this trip.

The next day was Monday but all of that driving on Sunday put a dent into us. Woo - the Tennessee - Georgia border seemed a long ways away still. Because the hotel was located on Highway 10, we just took it into KC and then back on I-70.  The 3-hour drive in Missouri was ok but wow once we got into Illinois, we were tired but still a long ways back home. In that state of mind, the miles drag by. I was convinced we needed to make it to Paducah - and we did but it was a struggle. We made it to the Drury Inn in time for free food -- that's a plus!

Paducah back home was a shorter trip of 4 hours -- back in time to pick up the dog! Here is picture of going down Monteagle -- three lanes, 6 percent grade, runaway strips. Back in the ridges and plateaus of Tennessee!

Monteagle descent

Epilogue:

Since I won't have a Father's Day blog post from June 2021 -- here is a picture of my beautiful cake resembling a beer mug! 

May 2021 Road Trip to Kansas Part Four of Five Series

 Part 4 is Mt. Vernon - the Farm

Ash Creek valley and the road past the Hunter farm

Part 4 stays in Rooks County. It's not a very far drive from Nicodemus (Part 3) to Mt. Vernon Cemetery. As we drove up Highway 24 east from Nicodemus, we noticed how full Webster Lake was - it was really full of water after the May rain!

Mt. Vernon is where my great-grandparents, grandparents, uncles, aunt, other related family members, and my Dad were buried. 

Me standing next to Dad's grave marker

When we walked over to Dad's gravesite, we left a note, wept a few tears, told him I was back to visit. I noticed that the rock that David left for his grandpa 9-months earlier was still there.

Grandparents

Cemetery road from front gate

Great-grandfather buried on other side

The old family rumor was that my great-grandfather said he wanted to be buried by the family of his first wife and my great-grandmother, his second wife, didn't object. He is buried next to his first wife. My great-grandmother outlived her husband by 24 years -- there was some age difference between the two.

This marked my second visit back to Mt. Vernon after Dad's graveside service. When you are out there, you can hear the wind whistling through the fence wire and the blades of grass yielding to it. Losing a parent and coming back to visit is not easy. I was wondering about Dad -- he was the caretaker for this cemetery for many, many years. What did he think about when trimming around his parents and his brothers gravesites. One will never know now.  

Leaving from the cemetery, we took the very short drive to what was the Hunter farm. Fewer than four miles. My mom had told me about the Hunter home being leveled but nothing hit like seeing it a few years ago. My children saw the vacant site. The one person who had not was the driver - my wife. She knew it but nothing prepares one for the vast emptiness that was a home. It hit her hard driving up to the old driveway entrance.

Used to be a two-story house here with thick limestone walls.

So many generations of family grew up here -- it is like a part of the root is gone within your soul. My great-grandfather built buildings around the area from limestone. The house was originally a limestone house that was added onto many times.

Leaving the old farm site, we headed towards Stockton. Part five will pick up from there back to Tennessee.

May 2021 Road Trip to Kansas Part Three of Five Series

Rooks County, south of Palco

We left Great Bend on Sunday, May 23rd and drove in a big semi-circle for most of the day to finally end up for the night in Lawrence, Kansas, home of Kansas University. Parts 3 - 4 - 5 will detail that Sunday.

First up - Hays, Ellis, Nicodemus.

We took highway 96 out of Great Bend to reach highway 183. Highway 183 played a big part in my life: it was the highway through Stockton, through Hays, runs near a sister's house, and was the highway that led me to a new life between my 8th grade and Freshman year.

When we got to south of Hays, we took the alternate bypass around to head to Frontier Park. This road takes one pass the historic Fort Hays site but we weren't heading to see the fort; we were headed to see the buffalo! 

Baby calf on the ground

Calving season was upon us and we saw baby bison romping around their large pen. We thoroughly enjoyed the show they put on for us!

We decided to forego driving on 183 and instead took the bypass all the way around Hays to I-70. On I-70 we put the metal down and drove the short trip to the Ellis, KS exit. It was spitting rain on us but that was the only time we ran into rain for the whole day. 

I played against some team from Ellis during school. The home of Walter P Chrysler of Chrysler fame is in Ellis. We took the exit and drove on county blacktop for several miles, weaving through Ellis County and then into Rooks County. We crossed the Saline River into Rooks County and again in part five.  

Many of the homesteaders and settlers of Nicodemus took a train to Ellis and walked on foot towards Nicodemus. Probably pretty close to the road we were taking from Ellis to Nicodemus. I was able to ride through Palco, a little village I had not seen in a long time and probably won't for a long time if ever.

We took Highway 18 to Damar and saw the beautiful twin steeples of the Catholic Church in Damar from the highway. Then we took another county blacktop to Highway 24. By this time we were only a mile from Nicodemus. Nicodemus is very important to me - I have written about this National Historic Site many times. I'm just going to post a lot of pictures for the rest of this blog post. But I'm going to end my text by saying -- I love Nicodemus!

The NPS ranger said I heard correctly: the old dugout was used by Nicodemus settlers after 5:00. 😢

Nicodemus Historical Marker

Fort Hays Historical Marker