Monday, September 20 - Friday, September 24, 2021 - Ozark Chapter 17 Escapees September Campout at Richey Cove, Council Grove, KS

Monday, September 20 - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - Ozark Chapter 17 Escapees September Casual Campout at Richey Cove, Council Grove, KS

Monday, September 20

Our camping buddies left us in Oswego earlier this morning.  I had tried to reserve our site for Sunday, even though we would not arrive until Monday, but someone already had the site reserved for September 19.  The campground permit allows campers to remain onsite until 4pm.  Since we didn't know how soon the campers in our site might leave, we didn't want to arrive at 1 or 2pm and not have a site available to us until as late as 4pm.  We finally left Oswego at 11:30am, making the decision to stop and visit Dean's brother, Larry and his wife Sandy in Garnett, KS.  We haven't seen them for awhile and it only added another 10 minutes to our trip.

We had a nice visit, and had not even left their house yet, when Drena texted that our site was available.  We arrived at 5:05pm at Richey Cove Park at Council Grove Lake, located just north of Council Grove, KS.  We set up in site #35, parked along side the lake.  We were sure glad to be there.  

We had six rigs present for this campout and we have much to look forward to in the upcoming days.  Our hosts Marc and Nancy have put together a wonderful agenda for us this week.  It sounds like a great time.

Sunset this evening

Bentley...I love the way the sun is highlighting the window in our door.

The Harvest Moon

Some of the group gathered at Marc and Nancy's to visit and enjoy watching the Harvest Moon rise.  

Tuesday, September 21

Dean and I walked around the campground this morning.  It was a nice walk and we stopped to watch the pelicans that were floating near the beach area.

Upon our return to Bentley, we had our morning shakes and then readied ourselves for today's activity, a visit to the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.  Drena and Keith rode with us to the preserve, located a few miles north of Strong City, KS.  A friendly young lady led us on a tour of the property, starting with the beautiful home that was constructed in 1881.  From there we visited a couple of other buildings including the nicest outhouse we've ever seen!  It looked like a small stone house from the outside. It's located in the far right side of this picture.  I'll spare you the view inside. 

Our group picture

The barn

View from the upper story of the house.

Beautiful vistas everywhere we turned.

That is the schoolhouse in the distance.

Another beautiful view.

This is the chicken house - a palace compared to the ones I have seen...notice the dirt/grass roof.

This is back side of the barn where the horses pull the trailers of hay inside to unload.

We walked a path around the house that provided a beautiful view of the schoolhouse, somewhere between 1/4-1/2 mile from the house.  We stopped at a few benches after we walked up a slight incline, where we all enjoyed resting for a few minutes before making our way to the beautiful barn, that was just around the corner.  After walking through the barn, Dean left to get the truck to pick us up and take us back to the park office.  We hoped to find a shirt as a souvenir of the area, but there were none available.

The school house

We returned to the RV.  Tonight is our potluck meal.  Our hosts provided meat from Kansas City Joe's, baked beans, buns, Root Beer from the Louisberg Cider Mill, and a variety of condiments for sandwiches and small bags of chips.  Of course there were a number of side dishes, and desserts as well.  The meal was excellent and there are enough leftovers for another evening!  Yea....we all like leftovers!

After the meal and cleanup, Dean and Alvin pulled the Fire Genie's out and had a nice fire going that we all enjoyed, along with a beautiful sunset.

Wednesday, September 22

Dean and I walked again this morning, increasing the distance of our walk when we added in another portion of the park, located on a peninsula where several more camping sights were located.  While they did not have water or sewer, they did have 50 amp electric.  These were beautiful sites.

Today we are on our own to explore the area and that is what we set out to do.  As we left the park, we took the opposite direction where we entered our park, and visited a couple of other parks along the lake, as well as a housing addition around a smaller lake a short distance away.  From there we drove into Council Grove, and you guessed it, we found the golf course.  If there is one to be found, Dean can find it.  From there we drove to downtown Council Grove to the Neosho River Walk.  Since Oswego is also located on the Neosho River we thought that would be a great place to begin our visit here.  We had barely pulled in and were getting ready to get out of the truck, when Don and Lynda showed up.  They are members of our Escapees club.  We spent the rest of the day with them as we visited various places around town.  What a beautiful walkway they have along the river. 

This picture can be enlarged to read the story.

Post Office Oak - people traveling the Santa Fe trail could leave letters or notes here for other passing along the trail.

Madonna of the Trail.
This is the 200th year celebration of the Santa Fe Trail.

From here we moved on to the Museum which was a short distance from the Madonna above.  A large group was touring the museum while we were looking at other sites along the way.  As they were leaving, we visited with Kelly Judd, who had just finished giving them a tour.  He said we could look through the museum while he met with the tourist group at The Hays House, a short distance away.  He returned shortly and talked to us about various things in the home.  From there he led us, as we followed in our vehicles, to the Seth Hays house which is shown below.  Seth Hays was the original founder of Council Grove.

Seth Hays House

Sculpture of Seth Hays and Miss Kittie, who he raised.  The link above tells the story of Seth Hays, Miss Kittie and Aunt Sally.

We left Mr. Judd after our tour of the Hays Home.  By then it was well after the lunch hour and we were all hungry.  We chose the Trail Days Cafe & Museum.  

The food was delicious but it took quite awhile to prepare it.  There was an older couple operating the cafe today.  Their refrigerator went out, requiring them to climb up and down a set of stairs to the basement to collect various food items.  They were dressed in period clothing, and the man was full of information to share.  It was a different but very interesting lunch, and I believe we all enjoyed our meal and the information they provided.  We wanted a glass of ice tea, but all they had was black cherry.  Don, Linda and I chose it, while Dean chose a glass of water.  When they brought it, Linda and I both commented how weak it looked.  Surprisingly when we took a sip it was stronger than we expected.  Once we added a little sugar it was quite good.  The meals are prepared close to what might have been served in the early days of Kansas.  We would recommend this restaurant!

We made one final stop before we returned to the campground and that was to see Hermit's Cave.  We found it right away, but what a disappointment - there was no cave....just some rocks with a slight overhang.  Maybe there was a cave at one time?

From here we made our way back to Richey Cove and our site.  We rested a couple of hours before we carried our leftovers from last night down to Alvin and Linda's site.  The wind is not as bad at their site as it is near us and our neighbors to our left.

Our group for the evening.

We enjoyed a fire...when it goes out...it's goodnight to all!

Thursday, September 23

Today we are making the drive to Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, located 29 miles south of Richey Cove.  Alvin and Linda rode with us today.  Upon arrival, we parked on Main Street in front of Calico Rose Fabric & Quilts.  Linda wanted to visit there, as well as Drena and Carolyn.  We enjoyed looking around.  While they were visiting with the owner, I was checking out the beautiful quilts hanging on the walls.  I spied this one and just fell in love with it - even more so when I took a picture of the printed portion on the bottom right of the quilt.  I loved it even more afterwards - this quilt was meant to be!

You can increase the size of the picture by clicking on it.

We left the quilt shop and started visiting the many shops along the two block main street of Cottonwood Falls.  So many things to see and do in such a short area and time was quickly running out as we were scheduled for a tour of the Cottonwood Falls County Courthouse at 11:30.  We stopped in a couple of antique/resale shops.  The first one was so immaculately laid out, we all commented to the owner how nice it looked.  We made one more quick walk to the north end of town where we enjoyed looking at a number of products made by Kansas artists at Prairie Past Times.  While we were looking around, Nancy poked her head in to let us know it was about time for the tour, so we hurried our way back to the courthouse where we gathered outside.  I've forgotten the name of the gentlemen who covered some basic information about the building before we moved inside.

Nancy and our host for the tour making their way to the Courthouse.

Making our way through the building

Take a look at those telephone poles and lines on the right side in the above picture.  Dean loved these!

I took this picture out a window where they placed a platform for folks to walk up to look out over downtown Cottonwood Falls.  You can see for miles.

What a gorgeous building.

Our next stop was lunch at Grand Central Grill - back at the other end of the two block street.  Yes, we had our walking shoes on and it felt good to be outside on such a beautiful day.  It was a beautiful building.  The inside had been tastefully decorated with a number of table settings.  We had four to a table, a total of three tables.  We shared our table with John and Carolyn, some of our new members.  We enjoyed visiting with them.  My salad with small chunks of tenderloin on romaine lettuce with blue cheese, along with a wonderful dressing was light.  I was disappointed there was not more lettuce on the plate, but otherwise the meal was very good.  Dean had chicken tenders, and he was happy with his choice.

After lunch, Linda and I walked back to the quilt store.  At Prairie Past Times, I had visited with the clerk there and asked him about Emma Chase.  When I was working for the City of Oswego, I attended many city and tourism meetings across Kansas.  Marci Penner spoke to both cities and tourist groups and she often talked about Emma Chase in Cottonwood Falls, who operated a restaurant there.  Marci talked about the innovative ideas Emma and others came up with to bring tourism to their small town.  I have wanted to visit Cottonwood Falls ever since, so I was very excited about this RV campout.  I found out that Emma Chase (not anyone's real name) was in fact Sue Smith who owns the quilt shop we stopped at.  After we stopped in again, I enjoyed visiting with her about how her restaurant and the name Emma Chase came about.  I could have continued visiting with her, but our husbands were waiting outside to return to Council Grove, so having a great coversation, I thanked her for her time and we excused ourselves.  

It's always nice to visit with Alvin and Linda and we enjoyed the ride to and from this small, but very busy community.  As we passed back through Council Grove, Dean mentioned Dairy Queen.  Alvin agreed.  It was perfect, as we didn't even need anything for dinner after this treat.

We gathered back at Linda and Alvin's at 6:30 for our last Fire Genie fire of this casual campout.  

What a great casual campout this was.  Marc and Nancy did an outstanding job of coordinating the events for the week.  It's a place I've wanted to visit for years and now I can mark it off my bucket list, but I won't mark it off as a place "not" to return too.  I look forward to going back again someday and spend time in everyone of those little shops on Main Street in Cotton wood Falls.