And while I was parked in an empty parking lot that seemed to be part of a downtown municipal parking area of this town.....as I was returning to my car I noticed an old hydraulic car lift in the middle of it all......I was indeed parked on the site of an old gas station without first realizing it.....irony....
Not many miles down the road was Chetopa where I tool alot of photos and on the western edge of town was this charcoal factory. Have you ever seen one? Just imagine everything surrounding the place being covered in black soot like a coal mine-----I think that tv show "Dirtiest Jobs" needs to come and film there. I'm not trying to put it down but it was a VERY dirty place.
Across the street sat the vacant post office....closed forever earlier this year with only a gas heating stove sitting inside that was left behind.
An abandoned school I found interesting at the ghost town of Valeda...
Next photo is from tiny Dearing where I saw this cool old drive in hamburger joint that is still open.
Soon I was at Tyro which was a ghost town with a cool old building downtown where I took these photos...
Next up the bigger town of Caney offered another chance for me to picture a very patriotic drive in eatery that happened to be for sale but was still open for business
Same town I saw this very old home that was perhaps a boarding home or hotel in it's earlier life
And a roadside photo at a crossroad intersection in the country where there were 3 of these old cabover work truck from the early 1940's.
Later in the day I saw this cool old Air Force trainer that is now a Veteran's Memorial in a park setting at a ghost town in the middle of Flint Hills region that was named Moline, KS. I was told that it has recently been moved here from Independence, KS where it was no longer wanted.
Not far away I was at the county seat town of Howard which was full of cool things to see including this old drive in that was busy with coffee drinkers on this cold winter day.
and this old packer roller that would have been used to pack the dirt streets and help make them a hard surface to drive on which was sitting behind an old city garage building
and yet another old jail from the frontier days of this ranch country where misbehaving cowboys would have been locked up and await their turn with the local judge...
This town is also known for it's grass landing strip that allows small plane pilots to taxi right up to the parking lot at the historic Beaumont hotel which is a good place to eat and serves as an "oasis on the prairie " if you will. This place has been bought and sold and remodeled many times over the years. I have seen it abandoned and neglected and all restored and somewhere in between over the lats 30 years or so.
An old church that reminded me of Christmas...
A new highway by passes this town but close by is this abandoned service station that looks forlorn and lonely on the old road to nowhere....
and then some "ageless iron" I saw along the highway at a farm....
And by now it was getting late and I only took a few more photos that were not that interesting and darkness was fast approaching so I kept the pedal to the metal and drove the reaming 2 hours or so home as focused on the road ahead as possible. Waiting for me at home was supper of french toast and bacon with hot coffee.
And that was the end of my road trip from last week.....it was another good day indeed.....thanks for riding along. :-)
thanks
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking we need to go on a sign hunting trip and bring back a couple of old signs, then get my buddies at the sign shop to restore the electronics but leave the weathering and we'd have some cool art pieces.
ReplyDeleteI love the photos and blog. About where (what crossroad/intersection) did you see the ford cabover? Great stuff!
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