White City

White City is surrounded by prosperous farms, as well as a few poorly-aging homesteads. The town is rich in modest, well-maintained homes and lawns.

One of our favorite things about this town was the fact that there are two museums downtown, one in a one-room schoolhouse and the other in an old railroad car across the street. They are run by twin sisters, and they are only open on the second Saturday of the month. 

Galena

 

Galena is on Historic Route 66, and it was used as a research location for the Pixar movie Cars. If you stop at the Kan-O-Tex service station, you'll see the boom truck that inspired the character of Mater.

The town also has a mining museum which, we regrettably found, closes at 3:30. It does have some outside exhibits that we got to see, including an anti-aircraft gun manned by a 5-year-old girl. We enjoyed the downtown area, and we wish time and weather would have allowed us to visit Schermerhorn Park, where a cave and river show the landscape and wildlife of the Ozarks of Kansas. 

The town has a few churches, a cemetery, and a shopping district where a sign in front of a store called Liberty Hall boasted, "We buy gold, silver, and guns."

We were charmed by the Dalmatian-painted fire hydrants throughout the town.

Humboldt

Humboldt is a friendly little town in Allen County. We visited because of the Biblesta, which is exactly what you'd think: A Bible-themed party that the whole town shows up for!

Magen ran in the Biblesta 5k early in the morning. Then, after returning to visit the Safari Museum in Chanute, we returned to Humboldt for the Biblesta parade in the afternoon.

One interesting fact about Humboldt is that a Confederate sympathizer was shot there during the Civil War for trying to steal the U.S. flag from the town square. The name of the local bar, "Reb's Place," is a reference to that event.

Chanute

We stayed in Chanute on Friday night because we were planning to go to the Biblesta in Humboldt the next morning. We had gone through the city on our trip to Iola back in July, and we had decided to stay in downtown Chanute the next time we were in the area if at all possible.

We had dinner at Little China restaurant downtown. It was fine, but no match for our beloved China Pavilion in Topeka. There was a fair variety of food, prepared pretty well, and the staff was very friendly.

We stayed at The Nest, a nice hotel downtown. It used to be called the Tioga Hotel, and this building has been a fixture in downtown Chanute for nearly a century. The lobby smelled a bit like smoke, but the room was clean and well-maintained (though very small!).

We also visited the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum, which is housed along with the Chanute Public Library in a beautiful old railway station.