May 26th - Atchinson, Kansas

Our big task for the day was to reposition our campsite west on the Missouri River. We had chosen the “Lewis and Clark State Park” campground as it was just across the river from Atchison, Kansas where we definitely wanted to walk and within driving distance of Topeka, the state capital of Kansas, Kansas City, and other possible walks. Monika drove the first leg of the journey due west along Interstate 70, and the traffic was initially light but later heavier as we neared the outskirts of Kansas City. I took over shortly before Kansas City and drove northwest to the park.

As we neared the park on some decidedly secondary roads, some of the bridges were so badly deteriorated that they were placarded for 15 mph for trucks over 21 tons. The concrete had fallen off the railings so badly that the reinforcing bars underneath were clearly visible along the whole length of the bridge! I couldn’t help thinking that if it was that bad on top, what was it like on the bottom? This is one of the few times I have seriously thought about the two different strategies for driving over a shaky bridge with an eye to making a quick decision about how to handle the situation if one of these bridges looked like it was collapsing on me.

The first strategy is to drive as fast as you can up to the bridge with the hope that sheer momentum will carry you over even if the bridge collapses while you’re on it. Call this the Risky Strategy. The second strategy is to slow down to a crawl and try to creep across the bridge while putting as little stress as possible on it in the hope that it will stay up until you are across. Call this the Cautious Strategy. There is, of course, the “drive normally” strategy but I’ll admit I didn’t really ever consider that at the time. So what would you do? My choice was to shoot the works and go blazing across it, trusting that the truck’s suspension would survive the landing on the other side. But I’m willing to be enlightened if anyone has a better idea.

We made it successfully to the campground and found it mostly deserted altho it had been completely packed the night before according to the Campground Host. This campground featured wooden shelters at many of the sites and we chose one of those. We figured it would be very nice in the rain and altho it didn’t look like rain, you can never really tell—we’ve had many such surprises. We set up the tent, paid for three nights, and hustled a mile or so across the Missouri River into Atchison.

The Volksmarch walk at Atchison started from the Visitors Center, which also included a museum to the Atchison, Topeka, and Sante Fe Railroad that was founded here. There are interesting exhibits inside the center and a set of trains and cars on tracks just outside. We had to find the start box for the girl at the desk, as she had never heard of Volksmarching or the box, apparently. In case you also do this walk, the box is directly under the counter where you enter and approach the desk.

The girls staffing the center were, however, very nice and eagerly offered us some other information that was quite useful. First, make sure to get a copy of the brochure entitled, “Atchison Kansas: Visitors Guide & Map” and carry it with you while you do the walk. This brochure has a detailed map with good pictures of all of the famous sites and houses you will be passing. By referring to it while you walk, you can first of all be sure of what you’re looking at, which is always a reassuring feeling, and second you get one-paragraph summaries of the histories of each place that help you understand each one. They also gave us a National Park Service brochure on the “Lewis and Clark Trail” and another such brochure just on the segment of the Lewis and Clark trail in Kansas—both might be useful if you are generally interested in Lewis & Clark and their journey.

From the Visitors Center we walked thru the downtown area and then made two large loops thru the rest of the city. The downtown area has a central section of 3 blocks that has been converted to a pedestrian mall with trees and bushes in the center. Economically, this mall seemed to be succeeding since I saw only one empty storefront along those blocks. Unlike some of the other small-city malls I’ve seen, this one has a arched concrete cover over the sidewalks on both sides. That seems to give the mall an aesthetic consistency that is pleasant and belies the underlying variety of architectural styles of the storefronts. The mall also has a nice statue to Amelia Earhart, the city’s most famous daughter, who died trying to fly around the world, but that’s another story.

The first loop had a north-south orientation and passed by Amelia Earhart’s birthplace and a Benedictine monastery and college. Earhart’s birthplace was a nice old house on the bluff overlooking the Missouri River. It was a nice view downstream from the top. We visited the house the next day and found it very interesting.

Also on this walk we found quite a few really striking houses from the Victorian era, but also one with a wide, flat, overhanging roof that looked like it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The Victorians were ornate, exuberant houses with steep roofs, complex gables, and a lot of gingerbread while the latter was quite plain, which made it stand out in rather stark contrast. The second loop was basically an east-west loop out from the downtown area. There is less to see along this loop, but we returned by large grain silos and some kind of grain processing plant (I think) that represented the industrial base for Atchison. All in all, the Atchison walk represents an interesting small Midwestern town with several nice museums.