Magnus Goes North With Summer, Day 4

Friday May 30

As planned, we went to the Pony Express Museum. Finding it, in a downtown full of little tiny streets and one-ways was somewhat challenging.  We ended up having to pull over, look at the map, think, then use our eyes. Google Maps was about a block off on the location.

 

The museum was okay. The little movie they showed was more concerned with the founders and owners of the company that ended up running the Pony Express, and there was little of interest about the places and routes and riders. Also the movie had an annoying, sucky background soundtrack.  But the museum exhibits covered all the other stuff in detail.

 

But the most interesting thing was that the building had been repurposed at least twice since the Pony Express days, so when it became a museum they’d done an excavation to expose part of the original foundation. And they exhibited the artifacts they found there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After that we went to the restaurant I’d chosen, 54^th Street Scratch Grill and Bar. I thought they were only a chain in the St Joseph area, but it turns out they’re a nationwide chain with locations in Dallas and maybe even McKinney.  Oh, well, that’s how it goes. The service was fast and the food was very good.

Home by 6:45 or so, in plenty of time for Molly’s evening walk and winding down. On the road again tomorrow!

 

Campground sucked, pretty much.  Here are some shots of it. Nice trees and that's about all. 

Magnus Goes North With Summer, Day 3

Thursday May 29

It rained a lot in the night and was still intermittently spitting rain when we left. It wasn’t cold, but a light jacket felt good. That seemed strange to us, coming from Texas where jackets had been put away for the summer.

We filled up at 450 miles with the tank being a little over 3/8 full.

 

 

From Independence, Kansas, we passed into Missouri to go north. I was surprised at all the prairie land—plowed and planted, of course—but still rather flat and rolling.  There were trees, but they seemed to come in singles or small groups in the low lands. I guess it was prairie once, too. Of course, we were in the far western side of the state—I know the east is full of big hills and forests, caves and waterfalls.

 

It finally quit raining when we arrived at Lewis and Clark State Park in Rushville Missouri, just north of Kansas City. It was a weird campground. It was tiny and cramped and had all the negative things you didn’t expect in a state park (see my review below), but it was filled with birds and fields. And nice walking trails to the Lewis and Clark Interpretative trail.  Which was not really a trail, but basically just a big, spiral sidewalk with large informative signage.  It marked one of their campsites, at an oxbow lake of the Missouri River.  The lake can be seen off in the distance but its mostly dried up now.

 

 Don't know why I thought this water tower was so interesting,

All around the “trail” were tall grasses and even taller flowers.  And there were birds all over! Bobwhites calling constantly and I even saw a couple when we flushed them into the trees. There were more Bobwhites than I’ve every heard in one place. Also Indigo Buntings, Orchard Orioles, Chipping Sparrows, blackbirds, robins, Yellow Warblers, Baltimore Orioles and Redheaded Woodpeckers.  Noisy with birds!

 Bobwhite turning his back at me!

 

 

The map at the interpretive trail overlook: 

REVIEW

Lewis and Clark SP Rushville MO site 63 $47

More like a city park than a campground

But, oh, the birds! If you’re into birding, there's a lot to come here for. Otherwise, no, unless you want to stand on the spot where Lewis and Clark launched their boats.  There is a short interpretative trail but it’s really just a spiral-ish sidewalk lined with huge signs that tell parts of the history of the exploration party and especially their time in Missouri. Interesting, sure, and it’s always nice to read about history when you’re standing on the ground where it happened. But otherwise nothing you can’t get out of a good book.

The campground is blah, very blah. They are adding a bunch of concrete pads for new campsites in the middle, and when they get that done I expect they will be very nice…but still have the general the look and feel of an RV park.  Right now, there is just a semicircle of electric-only campsites around a construction site. At which they started work before 8am this morning. But then they quit work around mid-day, so I’m not sure how noisy it would get in “full swing.”

There are trees and it’s a very pretty location, but it is right at the edge of a populated area.  From my campsite, I can hear lawnmowers, dogs, kids at play, and cars. They’re right beside the campground with only a partially built low board fence separating us.  Anyone could walk or drive right in, if you’re worried about that kind of thing.  I don’t get the feeling that this is a dangerous area—it’s just a small town in a rural area—so I feel perfectly okay with it.  It’s just strange.

The campground host was very nice and I got the feeling he stayed on top of things.

Our 50-amp electric worked fine and our back-in site was spacious but crammed in right next to its neighbors. Luckily there were only a few people there on a Friday at the end of May.

There are two water fill stations, well marked, one on the way in and one by the dump station. The water pressure at the fill was very good.  Check-in online was easily accomplished and all I did on arrival was stop by and talk to the host to verify that there were no vehicle tags needed.

Despite all the negatives, it’s perfectly okay for an overnight stay.  But wouldn’t go out of your way for this, unless you’re a birder.  Over by the oxbow lakes (rapidly disappearing) there are a handful of trails cutting through the grassland and woods.  More bobwhite quail than I’ve heard in years.  Merlin heard a lot of birds, and I even saw a few of them!  I saw Dickcissel, Bobwhite Quail, Orchard Oriole, Yellow Warbler, Common Nighthawk, Warbling Vireo, and Eastern Kingbird.  Merlin reported Field Sparrow and Bell’s Vireo.  I’m sure there would be many more if you got out early in the morning.

Magnus Goes North With Summer, Day 2

Wednesday May 28

High 75, low 61, no rain. There were stars in the sky last night, but it was overcast again in the morning. Chilly with a little breeze, too.

The trip for the day was to Elk City State Park near Independence Kansas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a very short drive, only about two hours twenty-five minutes. We dawdled leaving (to accommodate the late check-in time) but still left by 10:30 and arrived around one. The guy at the office made no issue with the early check-in (check-in time was 2pm). And the campground was pretty much empty.

Big sites, lots of pull-thrus. Full hookup in the Comfort Cove loop. The loop over by the lake has prettier sites and more people, but they’re back-in W/E only sites.  And there’s another loop called the Prairie loop, back away from the lake. It might have been FHU but wasn’t nearly as nice as Comfort Cove.  And there was a tent camping loop that only had one person in it.

Comment at the time:

Elk City State Park is a pretty cool place.  But I may change my mind tonight after a few more noisy young adult jerks come into the campground. And park right beside us.

 

 

After settling in and giving Molly a walk, Ed and I went to the Little House on the Prairie homesite and museum. It’s funny how many trees there are now, in a place that she described as…

Kansas was an endless flat land covered with tall grass blowing in the wind. Day after day they traveled in Kansas, and saw nothing but the rippling grass and the enormous sky. In a perfect circle the sky curved down to the level land, and the wagon was in the circle’s exact middle.

But when you look at all the trees growing in the ditch between my middle field and back field—which was completely clear 25 years ago--you can imagine how fast cottonwoods, bois d’arc and box elder can grow in 150 years.  According  to the book Prairie I was just reading, the culprit is fire. Or, I should say, the lack of fire. 150 years of fire suppression can create a forest where one is probably not sustainable, climate-wise. But we shall see—all of these trees survived a number of droughts and seem to be thriving. So maybe it was the fire keeping the prairies clear after all.

 

 

 

The recreated house 

Weird. The one thing I’d like to see—and possibly I could see, but I didn’t put it on the agenda—is a piece of native tallgrass prairie preserved to look much like the ones of the 1870s. The field across from the museum has some pretty tall grass plus a whole lot of wildflowers and milkweed. But I didn’t see any big bluestem—could it be that I just don’t recognize it when it’s not blooming?  I heard tons of Dickcissels on our drive. Cool to finally hear one again, and to hear so many in quick succession.  The last one I heard back home was probably mowed over when the fields got mowed early in the nesting season.

Other than Pa’s well, there’s nothing to be seen of the actual homesite. Except grass and Dickcissels.  They’ve put a restoration of the log cabin there and it’s very well done, all the way down to a china shepherdess on the mantelpiece.  And the corded door latch that Pa built in such careful detail in the book.

 As to why they left, will anyone ever really know?  The reason she gave in the books could have been a plain and simple fabrication resulting from the many years of passed time plus the need to flesh out a well-told story. (Which it is!)  I don’t know whether she deliberately made it up or remembered it incorrectly or just remembered a vague notion told to her by the grownups.

In the book, the reason gave is that the government was sending soldiers to drive all the white settlers out of what was technically the Osage Diminished Reservation. When Pa heard that, he packed up the wagon and left rather than “being driven out like a criminal.”  But I do not believe there is any historical record of soldiers being sent—if he did hear it, it was a lie or a rumor told by someone else.

But the more probable reason is that they weren’t doing so well with their farming and needed to retreat to more civilized country. History doesn’t show that they ever established a formal ownership of the land, and if they’d tried, they wouldn’t have been able to afford it. I’ll do some more research on this later and see if I can find a better explanation.

Enough. The trip over there didn’t take more than an hour total, so when we returned Molly and I went for a walk while Ed took a showev and cooked his barbequed chicken.  Molly and I went on the Green Thumb Nature Trail (I think). And wow. Not so much nature—although I did see an unidentified small varmint and Molly nearly lost her cookies over a small herd of deer—but wow, what a trail.  Someone chose a tortuous path up and down the side of the hill, finally reaching the top and then turning around and cutting straight through rocky outcrops to the bottom. 

I’d expected to be doing road walking, so I’d just worn sneakers. And that was a mistake on the downhills. I didn’t fall, but I had to choose my steps wisely for a while. The sneakers tend to be slippery especially on muddy rocks.

The trail with blue blazes

It wasn’t a very long trail, maybe three-quarters of a mile. After that Molly and I walked all around the lakeside campsites and stuff.

And that’s all for the day. Tomorrow it’s on to…somewhere. I don’t know where. But I know we’ll be spending two nights there so Ed can get a rest.

Review Elk City State park site 211 $27

Noisy, but endearing and very large

We were in Comfort Cove at a pull-thru site with FHU.  50-amp electricity, water and sewer worked as expected.

We were there in the very last week of May and on a weekday. It wasn’t crowded at all, in fact, you could even call it empty. And  it was very lovely.  Clean, big sites, wide open roads to walk on or drive.  Gorgeous lake. Lots of birds and big green trees.

But even so, the few campers that were there were noisy enough that I can imagine hating the place on a summer weekend. They weren’t doing loud partying or anything dangerous, but they had lots of loud voices, car motors, boat motors, and an awful lot of dogs off the leash.

The online reservation process was easy, and the price not bad but having to pay an extra 5 dollar per vehicle (RV and toad) didn’t make me happy.  The guy at the office  was very nice and helpful.

We took a couple of trails and did a good bit of walking around. Beautiful place. Absolutely lovely lake and a great place to bring your boat. There was a camping area near the lake, with a boat ramp and trailer parking area. And our camping loop, Comfort Cove, was just past a line of trees and a road from that one. Another loop, Prairie View, looked nice but was farther from the lake and was just in a big field.  But still okay, especially if you were going to be on the lake or out hiking around a lot. 

Magnus Goes North With Summer

 Tuesday May 27, 2025

Start of our trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park!  Like a lot of trips, I was worried it would never happen—I couldn’t get a response from Waynette about house sitting.  But finally she answered me and things were all set. On Monday we had a horrid grocery shopping trip, horrid because of all the food we had to buy, but then it was over and we were done.

The first day’s drive was not memorable. Just the same US-75 and US-69 we always take to Ed’s Mother’s house. And US-69 was as rough as always, with a few good spots. 

 I don't know what this random bridge was.

The Rocky Point COE Campground was a nice place. The road coming in was the the same horrid, narrow, rough road that all COE parks have, but at least it was straight and the place was easy to find. The hosts at the gate were very nice.

Our setup was performed in chilly, overcast conditions. But our picnic bench was dry so we could have a nice sit-down after hooking up.  Lots of birds—Orchard Oriole, Canada Geese, Spotted Sandpiper (2), Least Tern, Egrets, Killdeer.

Our site was very much like almost all of the COE lakeside campgrounds we’d stayed at. The lake—a reservoir--had the fluctuating lake level that causes the banks to crumble or be mostly bare. The trees and brush around the campsites were overly cleared, making for a wide view but not an exceptionally natural one. And the lake was pretty much empty of birds due to the time of year—all of the likely overwintering birds were up north for the season.

 

The lake level was high and possibly rising. Half of the park was closed—in fact, they moved our site reservation from 2B to 2A before we arrived because they were concerned the lake would be over the access road to the site. It wasn’t, but it was definitely over the boat ramp and the road that we would have preferred to turn around on when we exited our site. We were much worried that we’d have to unhook the Jeep and do a back-and-forth shuffle to get out. We didn’t.

 

 

The host said that the whole park would be closing on the next day. Electricity was being shut off; they didn’t say why.

 

The park was not very full, but it was noisy with kids and people’s music spilling out of their campsites. Not super loud, but annoying. And there was the usual COE litter scattered around.