In Atchison County, I visited the communities of Arrington, Larkinburg, Muscotah, Lancaster, Cummings, and Huron. I noticed a well kept stucco house in Arrington and actually met the woman who lives there while in Larkinburg admiring the Christian Church. She showed my the interior of the church and I was impressed with the wall art decorating the church.
Muscotah was the birthplace of Joe Tinker, a baseball player with the Chicago Cubs from 1902-1912, who played shortstop. Joe was part of the famous double play combination of Tinker to Evers to Chance, and there is a monument in the city park commemorating this.
There was some beautiful fall foliage in Lancaster, a nice school in Huron, and the small town of Cummings still has a post office.
In Doniphan County, I visited the communities of Doniphan (ghost town), Elwood, Wathena, Iowa Point (ghost town), White Cloud, Leona, Denton and Purcell. Both Doniphan and Iowa Point contain a mix of abandoned and new buildings and homes. I stopped a bit at the Ft Luxembourg visitor center in Elwood, and viewed the historic downtown district in Wathena.
White Cloud is in a very scenic area along the Missouri River and served river boats beginning in the 1830's. There is a monument along Main Street to Wilbur Chapman, the boy who started the piggy bank by donating his pet pig to a needy boy suffering from leprosy.
Purcell is the home of the beautiful St Mary's Church, now celebrating it's 150th anniversary. Denton seemed to be a nice town with very brilliant fall foliage and the unique hand operated water pump in the center of Main Street. Sadly, Leona appeared to be slowly decaying.
As always, I'm on the lookout for interesting historic bridges and I found a number of iron truss and stone bridges in these two counties. Check my photo gallery links below for some photos of these.
I visited several cemeteries in each county, and due to the hills in this region, cemeteries can be very picturesque. Especially interesting to me were Round Mound Cemetery and Muscotah cemeteries in Atchison County. Round Mound has a layered limestone fence surrounding it and Muscotah cemetery has large mature trees. In Doniphan County, I found Doniphan and Iowa Point cemeteries to both offer fantastic views of the surrounding hills and countryside.
I travelled a couple of scenic dirt road drives in Doniphan County. The first was the route from the ghost town of Doniphan up to the Wathena area. This followed closely the Missouri River and the fall foliage was beginning to get colorful in the forests in this area. Also, I took a route north from Wathena up to near the Missouri River, then back south again to just east of Troy. This route offered forests, hills and the bottomland near the Missouri River. Again, the fall foliage was striking.
I enjoyed several memorable meals during my trip. I had dinner one night at Pete's Steakhouse in Atchison. While the hamburger steak with grilled onions was good, the highlight of the meal was a number of homemade salads on their salad bar. My favorite was the Copper Penny salad, a cold salad with cooked sliced carrots and onion slivers in a sauce of sugar, vinegar and oil. I do not see this salad at restaurants very often.
Another night, I had dinner at Paolucci's Restaurant in Atchison, a great place that has been serving Italian food for many years. I had a very good order of lasagna, covered in a rich marinara and meat sauce.
After I finished my last loop in Atchison County, I travelled west into Jackson County to the small town of Whiting where I had lunch at the recently restored Whiting Cafe. The restoration of this cafe was done in June, 2009, and was a project of the Kansas Sampler Foundation. In addition to good food, this cafe is known for their fresh pies made daily. I can attest to this, since I had a piece of coconut meringue pie that was easily among the very best I've ever eaten.
All in all,even though the weather was cool and cloudy and misty sometimes, I truly enjoyed my journey to Atchison and Doniphan Counties.
For more information about the Whiting Cafe makeover, visit the Kansas Sampler Foundation blog at:
To view my photos of Atchison and Doniphan counties, visit my northeast Kansas Dare to do Dirt galleries, then open the appropriate county gallery:
1 comment:
I love Rosa's pies. Your autumn photos were beautiful!
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