Seneca

 

We'd been to Seneca before, but we came again anyway to celebrate Magen's Grandma's 90th birthday!

We stayed at the Altenhofen Inn & Suites, which was really nice, and visited a couple of towns on Sunday morning before having lunch with Grandma and Great Grandma.

(Not pictured: The waiter smearing whipped cream from the sopapilla on Great Grandma's face.)

Some interesting things about Seneca:

• It has a Pony Express Museum
• As a boy in 1996, I saw the Olympic torch pass through Seneca
• It had a minor league baseball team for one year in 1910
• You can still see a hand-dug well from the city's first water system

Centralia

Our visit to Centralia was a sad one; we went for the funeral of a family friend who died of cancer.

Despite the sorrowful reason for the visit, we still enjoyed seeing this quiet little town in Nemaha County where Magen's mom lived for a short time.

Magen got to see both of her grandmothers, the kids played cards with Papa Tom, and of course we could not suppress some silliness even on such a sober occasion.

Centralia itself has a complicated past. It was founded in 1859, moved to be next to the railroad in 1867, and was the site of a race riot due to the town's anti-Black sundown policy in 1901. At that time, around 1000 people lived here. Today, there are a few over 400 residents. The town's economy is mostly agricultural, and it has a few parks and a recreational lake.

Bancroft

To get to Bancroft, we drove through hilly country filled with wind turbines and down gravel roads lined with cattle pastures, corn fields, and scrubby trees.

The town itself had some broken down sheds, old homes, and the Bancroft Depot Museum. Sunflowers grew as plentifully as grass on the roadside.

Goff

On the way to Goff, we drove down a dirt road with a field of brown corn on the left side and yellow soybeans on the right, all awaiting the harvest.

In the fields, wind turbines were at work. Brick silos sat in crumbling decay just down the hill from shiny new metal ones. The country here is full of corn and soybeans and milo and cattle.

Goff is built on  a hill. The Henry Bros. service station sits on the main road, as do several aging red brick buildings with white trim and roofs. If you take one of the gravel roads up the hill, you'll drive past some modest homes, many of them aging and worn out. The town also has an overgrown ball field, a fire station, and a town park, as well as lots of construction equipment sitting in yards and driveways.

In exploring the town, we passed and re-passed the service station no fewer than three times. I was afraid they'd think we were casing the joint.

St. Benedict

St. Benedict is a cute little town whose main attraction is St. Mary's Catholic Church. We wanted very much to go inside, but there was a wedding, so we couldn't. Fortunately, there are several websites that have pictures, including this one, this one, and this one. But maybe the best photos I found were on this flickr site!

Though we didn't get to go inside, we did look around the lovely grounds and cemetery. It was pretty well kept, though I noticed a cross had fallen off of (or been removed from) a 19th-century gravestone.

One fun thing about this one was that my selfie was lit from behind, which made me look a bit like a saint myself!

We'd like to come back sometime to see the beautiful inside of this historic church on the prairie.

Baileyville

On our way back from Magen's grandparents' house in Axtell, we stopped through Baileyville. It's a small, unincorporated town on Highway 36. We really liked the historic gas pumps and paint job at Koch's welding shop, and we also noticed a charming old truck as we were going through town.

There didn't appear to be a lot going on here, though there were a couple of small shops and restaurants, as well as the Highland Community College Western Center.

Wetmore

We went to a wedding just outside of Wetmore, a town that was named for a railroad official back in the 19th century.

The wedding was at a charming pumpkin farm. The boys enjoyed playing on the combine, sliding down the big in-hill slide, and playing in the rock garden / fountain near the main hall. The proprietress of the farm was less than enthusiastic about this last activity, so they quickly vacated the rock garden (but not before getting thoroughly soaked).

After the reception dinner, we were exhausted and glad to be so close to home and our nice, dry beds.

We would definitely like to come back in the fall when there are more activities to be enjoyed.