Cathedral on the Plains

While returning to Colorado from a funeral in Florida I took a little side trip to Victoria, KS and the Cathedral on the Plains: http://www.kansastravel.org/cathedralofheplains.htm

It was about 100° F out and we had dogs with us so we didn't stop for long. Just long enough to pop our heads in, grab a couple of shots and then walk the dogs around the grounds.

I'd hoped to grab a shot of a lonely church settled out amongst the rolling fields of Kansas, but the village of Victoria got in the way. Instead, I only grabbed these couple of shots with my phone.

Interesting story, according to a church employee, the area was settled by German-Russians. In the seventeenth century (?) Germans were invited to Russia to cultivate the land with the promise of no taxes and no military service for 100 years. When that time was up those families, who never assimilated, left Russia for the New World and promised of no taxes and free land to farm. Some of them came to Kansas.

This church was built by their descendants and has enough seating for nearly everyone in town.

The third image, the one of the tower, seems like it has that HDR halo around it commonly found in terrible HDR. None of my images are HDR. What you're seeing is the sunlight from the backlit tower making the sky around it a little lighter.