VENAGO – PART III

The third day of the loop found us in Lindsborg, KS.  It is advertised as a Scandinavian Town.  Indeed you could see the influence all over town of its ancestry.  From the Dala horses painted in all manners all over the town ,

There was even a “Tala Dala”

To the brightly colored homes.

Of course there was a restaurant to be tried.  Too bad we didn’t check the prices before we sat down.  The food was decent at the Swedish Crown, but not worth the big bucks it cost.  Also, it would have been nice if it had been a bit more decorated in a mother country style instead of the local diner look.

One of the best things about Lindsborg was doing the “scavenger hunt”.  It was a local walking tour that had you looking for various landmarks and was really interesting to do.  Everything was on the main street and took less than an hour to do.  It was, of course, a free activity.  My favorite!

Here are a few photos of some of the things we saw while doing the scavenger hunt.

Santa Lucia was everywhere in town. 

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The town itself is unique in some of its buildings.  It was very fascinating to visit.

In Lindsborg there is also  The Old Mill Museum which, unfortunately, was closed the day we went there. As was the reproduction of the World’s Fair

Pavilion Lindsborg had once done.  So we had to be content to just walk around both of those on the outside.  If we should ever venture back this way we will definitely visit the insides of both these museums.

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At the edge of town Gary spotted this fellow sitting on a front porch.

Another unique place we went was Farris Caves.  It was a simple man made cave with two entrances.  Unfortunately like the Mushroom Rock vandals had been there as well.

Insert pho790-91, 95-96, 99-800,.

To round out the day we visited the Hodgen House Museum Complex in Ellsworth, Kansas.

We were given a guided tour of all the floors with explanations of each of the rooms. 

There were many unique objects, like the 10 hour watch.  Until visiting this museum we had no idea that there had been a movement in France in 1793 to push everything to the metric system including the hours in the day, the days in the week and months in the year. 

This might help explain some of the confusion on dates in genealogy research from that time period.

Another interesting bit of housing trivia we were told at one point in history homes were taxed based on the number of rooms in the home, not the square footage and closets were considered rooms.  This is why many homes of that era had no closets in them. 

Further research on my part later showed that this was a myth.  

We were so busy enjoying the museum grounds which includes many other buildings that were closed for various reasons we forgot to take the camera into the museum. 

I started out snapping a few photos with my phone, but quickly forgot about taking photos because the talk given by the volunteer was so interesting. Here are the few items I did get:

The first one is a bread machine, yes you read right.  The instructions for using it were even on the lid.

I had never seen a steam iron such as this one either.

Upstairs in the sewing room there was a piece of furniture that the volunteer had no idea what it was, so I snapped a photo and then posted it for some of my friends who are antique savy and learned for both myself and the museum that it was a yarn, ribbon or thread display cabinet.

The volunteer also took us to the trapper’s log cabin.  It was outfitted with all the necessities of life, an early tiny house for certain.

It was late in the day when we left the museum, but our ticket was good for both it and Ft. Harker, so we drove straight to the fort,   however, we got there after closing so we just read signs and took some outside photos.  We could have gone back the next day, but we were running out of time for that area.

Insert FT. Harker photos

All in all it was a very good visit in this area.  I want to take this opportunity to thank our friend Cliff Chisum for suggesting we visit the Kanapolis area.