Nicodemus National Historic Site

On our Spring Break GeoTrip across Kansas, we stopped at Nicodemus National Historic Site in Nicodemus, Kansas.  Of course, there was a Nicodemus geocache!

A little background information about Nicodemus:  Former enslaved African Americans left Kentucky in organized colonies at the end of the of post-Civil War Reconstruction period to experience freedom on the free soils of Kansas. Nicodemus represents the involvement of African Americans in the western expansion and settlement of the Great Plains. It is the oldest and only remaining all Black Town west of the Mississippi River.

While at the Nicodemus NHS, Jacob (aka Buggywasher) participated in the Junior Ranger Program.  You may ask what is a Junior Ranger?  Well, according to the National Park Service, a Junior Ranger is an explorer, a learner, and a protector of National Parks.  Junior Rangers complete a series of activities and share their answers with a park ranger.  At the end of the activities, the Junior Ranger receives a badge and a certificate.  It's a pretty cool program.  This is the 2nd one Jacob has done and he really has enjoyed it.

Jacob hard at work!

Jacob is an official Nicodemus Junior Ranger!

While we were at Nicodemus, Jacob and Jeff were able to use their National Park Passport.  For Christmas last year, my mum got Jacob and Jeff National Park Passports.  Each book contains information about our National Parks with a place for National Park stickers and stamps.  Each National Park has a cancellation stamp for you to put in your book.  Jacob and Jeff were able to stamp their books while at Nicodemus!

Spring Break GeoTrip

I've been so bad at keeping up with this blog.  Between my other blog (What's Cooking At Jen's House,) school, work, teaching, family and everything else, I just haven't been writing about our geocaching adventures, even though we've been geocaching during the last few months!

All three of us are on spring break for the past week, so we Jeff planned a big geo trip around Kansas.  When we were talking about and planning our trip, we knew that we wanted to combine several challenges...the Kansas 105 County Challenge, the Delorme Challenge and the Virtual Challenge, along with going to a few specific caches.  So Jeff worked for hours and planned our route and the caches along the way.

Early on Tuesday morning, we started out on our trip!  It was a beautiful spring day, all of us were wearing shorts and enjoying the mid 80* temps.  We visited some pretty cool cache sites on day 1.  Marblecake, The Love Shack, Boston Corbett Dugout and the Oil Museum.

Boston Corbett Dugout

Love Shack...I wonder what stories this house could tell...

Hmmm, a totem pole in front of the Oil Museum...Interesting!

Marblecake...the rock formations are amazing!

We stayed the night in Hill City at an awesome Bed and Breakfast.  After seeing what hotels were available in town, we called the B&B and were told to come right over.  The proprietor was so nice and friendly and the old Victorian house was lovely.  We stayed in the Angel Room, which was beautiful and overflowing with antiques and angels!  Our breakfast in the morning was wonderful~blueberry pancakes, sausage, fruit, Costa Rican coffee, OJ and milk.  Jacob told us that was the best place ever!

The Angel Room was on the 2nd floor with the "tower" and the middle window.

Day 2 took us from Hill City to Scott City.  Our caching started in Morland City.  We watched the sun peek over the horizon at the City Park.  Jacob and I played a few games of tether ball as Jeff searched (and replaced) the cache.  We traveled to Hoxie, were we did the Green and Yellow cache.  The cache container was well done!  After caching in Colby, we stopped for a picnic lunch at It's an Oasis.  Let me tell you, it was NOT an oasis.  The wind was howling and we ended up quickly making our sandwiches and eating them in the car!  We headed towards Mt. Sunflower, the highest point of Kansas, and the Colorado border.  We found Crazy Tricycle along the way to Scott City, which is where we spent the night.

 

 

It was really WINDY!

We started Day 3 with the windchill at 14*!  Brrrrrr.  We had the heater cranked, whereas two days before we had the AC cranked!  We started caching in Amy, Ks.  We did a run on KS 4, which led us to 20+ caches in a row.  What fun!  One of the caches in Great Bend led us to the Fuller Brush factory.  We took a 20 minute break from caching while I ran into the factory store.  Grammy Shaw used to buy me brushes from the Fuller Brush salesman.  The Lady Catherine was the only brush that could go through my thick hair.  I was pleased to see they still sell Lady Catherine, so when mine gets worn out, I know where to get another one.  However, I don't think it will wear out anytime soon...Grammy bought this last one for me about 17 years ago...and it's still going strong!

Our last cache of the day (or so we thought) was in Lincolnville, Ks at a cemetery.  Our 49th cache of the day.  It was just getting dark and a thunderstorm was heading our way.  Just as we finished up with the log book, it started to rain and hail!  A big bolt of lightening and the crack of thunder scared Jacob half to death!  So we high tailed it out of there.  It's a wonder that my poor Prius is still has all it's parts underneath as I bottomed out several times on the gravel road out of there! 

Once we made it home, Jeff and I began to log in all of our finds on geocaching.com.  Just after we finished, we noticed there was a new cache in our area...only 9 miles away!  Jeff got dressed and ran out at 10:20pm to claim the First to Find!  The 50th cache of the day, making this our record number of caches in one day. 

We had a great trip.  3 days, 841 miles and 115 different caches.