586. Wellington, Sumner County (KS050)

As you can see the courthouse was illuminated enough to take a decent photograph. Lovely, and probably WPA era, though I have misattributed those so many times that you shouldn’t take my word for that. The big bright light in the center seemed like it would be an annoyance, but it didn’t work out too badly. I haven’t done the research, but I suspect my most recent phone takes care of that in software. It has been performing well, and at this rate, I may stop carrying my alternate photography solution. Honestly, I haven’t used it since back in Illinois. The drive up was relatively uneventful. I got the joy of the little British voice welcoming me to both Oklahoma and Kansas, which is always a source of delight on any roadtrip. The one moment of strangeness on the journey was my encounter with the Kansas Tollway. I expected to encounter it, but not in the way that I did. When GPS routing sent me somewhere that I didn’t expect, I ignored it, looking at the easier, more direct route. Of course, the odd routing was to avoid the tollway, which meant I had a couple of miles of driving on it, resulting in the egregious toll of a $1.50. To be fair, it wasn’t the worst buck fifty I’ve ever spent (I’ve spent much more on much, much dumber things than that), but there’s a little part of me that is philosophically against tolls. This may not be the case for every toll road, but back in Texas, a lot of tolled roads were not previously tolled. There were improvements/extra lanes added, partially with state funds, the rest with private, and then those were subsequently tolled. Of course, there are non-toll portions of the road, but they are less well maintained, giving incentive to use the nicer, better maintained toll portion. Added to that is that the private company splits the tolls with the state for a certain period, after which the revenue goes completely to the company. So my tax dollars are building roads which I have to pay to drive on and the proceeds only partially return until they don’t at all. My point here (and I do have one) is that I resist toll roads in Texas, making me hesitant to use them most places, even when their convenience it obvious. But who cares about Texas infrastructure in Kansas? Other than me, that is?

The cache was across the street, supposed to be a micro in a tree which I searched for with no luck.  That wasn’t surprising since I was looking for a micro in a tree in the middle of the night, which as you can imagine is the last thing I really ever want to do.  Luckily, the previous finder mentioned that it was no longer in the tree, but at the base of the tree.  Little details like that are why I read hints and logs and all that good stuff.  If I’m going to look for a black cat in a dark room, it’s nice to know if the cat is actually there in the first place.  The cache acquired, I set off for what I hoped would be a bigger show, a toll free drive to the one and only…