As usual the photos are available on my websites (www.johngirtphotography.com and www.imagesmidwest.com), where you can order prints of any that you like.
The first part of the trip south of Kansas City can also include side visits to the communities of Paola, Pleasanton, Prescott, Hume, and Appleton City which will be covered in another blog. If they are included in this trip then the last part of the itinerary to Southeast Kansas would probably need to be postponed to another time unless you were stopping overnight in Fort Scott, Pittsburg or the surrounding area.
Assuming that this is not the case then a visit to the Marais des Signes (Marsh of Swans) Wildlife area could be the first stop and involve leaving the Highway to visit Trading Post, and then to use the gravel road State Line to enter and tour the Wildlife Refuge itself.
Trading Post is claimed to be the oldest continuously occupied (European) settlement in Kansas. It has a museum (that has never been open when I was visiting), and a rather cute and well preserved school house - shown above.
Returning to Highway 52 which crosses US 69 just north of Trading Post my most interesting exploration involved driving east, away from 69 not crossing it, to the State Line with Missouri. I used this road to travel south into the Refuge not looking for waterfowl that do gather in the area during spring and fall migrations, but for other opportunities to photograph. I discovered hawks, and a number of abandoned homes and a car, as shown the following shots.
Fort Scott is a short drive south on Highway 69 from the Marais. It was the site of a US Army fort from 1842 to 1853. Later the fort was revived for the Civil War, and now it is a restored National Historic Site. After the Civil War for a time the town of Fort Scott rivaled Kansas City in economic activity, and the downtown area shows this to this day with an array of fine victorian shops and commercial buildings. There are more opportunities for photos than I show here.
Just south of Fort Scott on a recent trip I spotted this abandoned school house on the side of Highway 69.
I have a series of interior and exterior shots at Images of the MidWest. Here is a shot of the front of the building not included on the link, and one of School's side with a vulture that conveniently decided to warm up on the roof just a I was taking the shot. I had 'fled' my home near Kansas City early to avoid hearing or seeing anything about the UK Royal Wedding in late April 2011, and was taking these shots quite early in the morning!
Driving south from this point one travels across an area that was once dominated by surface coal mines. On my first visit to this area that day in April, I found one remarkable attraction to photograph. You really need to see a larger version of this shot - click here.
This is Big Brutus, a dragline used to strip away surface deposits on top of coal seams. To give you an idea of the size of this 'brute,' nothing in the following picture is a scale model. The yellow dragline is the size of a similar piece of machinery that you might see working on a construction site. Both are now part of an indoor and outdoor display of mining equipment used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in this area.
To visit Big Brutus you need to drive south through, or around, Pittsburg,and take either US 400 West or Kansas 102 West. If you take 400 look for NW 50th when west of Cherokee and go south to join 102 at West Mineral. Signs point to Big Brutus from West Mineral and from 400.
If you are returning to the Kansas City area you could consider visiting Parsons a little to the west for a break in a pleasant town before continuing on 400 to US 169. Heading north on 169 will take you through Paola and back to Kansas City.
Summary of the trip: some great opportunities for interesting photos, but lots of driving; fortunately plenty of services are available in Fort Scott, Pittsburg, Parsons and on 169. Depending on your love of driving, either a two or a three star trip.
