We decide to park in the fairgrounds and when we arrive we are the only ones there. Thank goodness there were not any activities planned for the next couple of days and we would have peace and quiet. We had hookups albeit in the grass. When the custodian came around to collect the money however, he told us we could move out onto the road as it was supposed to rain that night and the next day and if we were on the grass, we just might not get out for awhile. That would never do as we were scheduled in Sedalia in a couple of days.
Taking a driving tour around Ft Scott we were taken by the gorgeous late 1800's homes that have been restored and reinvented.
Of course there are those that haven't been but they are definitely in the minority. As one passes down the various street, very often one sees signs of renovations. Of course, there are places where the old have been torn down to make room for the new. I too would want ac and tight, non-drafty walls with adequate plumbing. To give credit where credit is due, many of the rebuilt homes were built in the prevailing style of the late 1800's early 1900's. There was one standout however,
...art deco with the typical art deco colors of Florida - pepto bismol pink and sunflower hello. The icing on the cake however, just had to be the pvc rendition of palm trees swaying in the winds. Too bad the vivid colors aren't given justice in the late afternoon sun.
The next morning we took a trolley tour given by the Chamber of Commerce. A fast and furious tour of the various personalities and homes of Sedalia. Seems like every town has their homegrown heroes and Ft Scott is no different. Ft Scott was named after General Scott of the era and it is said that he replied "I'm not and don't expect me to go out there either." when asked if he was thrilled to have all these [frontier] places named after him. The fort was actually built along the Permanent Indian Boundary line that supposedly protected the Indian lands from being encroached by the White Settlers and to protect and prevent the inter-Indian conflicts. This fell by the way side before the fort could be completed but during it's heyday it was a major intersection. After the fort was sold off in the 1850's to the town and the town folks, the town continued to prosper as a the jumping off point for the new land openings in the west. Fortunes were made here and the housing of the late 1800's attests to this fact. Then it started a slow downward spiral until we come to today where it is a hustling refurbished town, proud of it's past, and making the most of it.
One of the houses that we had a very brief introduction to was a house of normal appearance where an avid quilted lives. She is so into quilt making that she has apparently decorated her house inside and out with quilts. To attest to the fact, I offer a couple of photos of the outside of her house, courtesy of the owner herself.
She was thrilled to be asked for photos of her house.
We enjoyed an afternoon at the national historical park where we partook of the type of cache that we particularly like - a multi-staged cache that takes you through the area making you read and learn the history. Then end is the satisfaction of finding the end correctly, learning all about the area and putting your name in the log book. Sometimes you can collect a travel bug and leave one, but this one was not big enough for anything other than the log book.
We could have spent far more time here but alas, Sedalia is calling and the storm clouds are a brewing. So off we go, farther to the NE ...
