Saturday, part 2

Two days in Russell, Kansas.   When we first decided to stop here for a few days we thought we'd just stay in and read or watch movies.   We'd been driving for 6 straight days and a rest sounded good, not much to see in the middle of Kansas farming and oil country, we thought.

Merry Christmas?

Here it is Sunday night and we haven't read a page or turned on the television.   Yesterday we drove into "town" to look around.      Russell has some very cute houses lining its wide, brick streets.

It has many lovely buildings made out of the local limestone.

It has a very nice lake, Fossil Lake, just a short walk from our campground and is loaded with fish.

Dave reads the list of fish that have been caught in Fossil Lake

As we drove around looking for the "downtown" area, we noticed that Main Street was blocked off and it looked like there may be a farmer's market or festival going on there.     It was a lovely day for a walk, we wanted to see the business section so we parked and set off on foot to see what was going on.

This weekend was a celebration of All Years Reunion, with a BBQ and Pie competition, a car show, and entertainment in the evenings.   We were too late to enjoy any of the BBQ or pie but the smell was still divine!    We were too early for the musical entertainment but we were exactly right on time for the car show!

Russell is in the center of  Post Rock Country.   We'd never heard of post rocks but we did notice the rather odd looking fence lines as we drove along and wondered what they were. 

The Chamber of Commerce building here was closed up tight but we did find a small brochure that told us a very little about these posts, but piqued our curiosity.    Google finally came to the rescue.

In this relatively treeless landscape the early settlers discovered a thin layer of rather soft yellow/tan limestone just below the surface that could be easily mined and cut into posts.

a future fence post!

 The stone hardens as it is exposed to the air, making perfect  posts.   The locals even call it Fencepost Limestone.

Close inspection of these posts reveals many fossils embedded in the stone.

Some people give vent to their creative urges by carving faces into the posts, but they're hard to notice driving by.   I did manage to spot one today, it was quite beautiful, but out in the middle of nowhere.   Dave, being Dave, happily backed up so I could get a picture to show you.

Today, Sunday, we packed a lunch, loaded up Lewis and set off to see what we could see.   More later.