Monday, September 7, 2009

Sparks/White Cloud ~ Fall 09 ~ The Scenery

This weekend (starting Friday for me!) has been a good one for flea markets and antique shows! Friday, I took off work and traveled to the twice yearly Sparks and White Cloud Flea Markets ~ about an hour and a half from my home. On the way, I passed through many other small towns ~ places like Troy, Wathena & Fanning ~ many have interesting signs welcoming you to their town.

{signs coming and going}

{Dairy Barn in Wathena}

White Cloud is about 10 miles from Sparks ~ at some point in its history it must have been an up and coming small town ~ there is a main street and surrounding streets, a decent sized school and a giant grain elevator. Now, things seem rather deserted ~ I believe the population is under 100 ~ the school serves as a museum and many of the homes and buildings have fallen into disrepair. Twice a year the flea market brings in many people ~ the main street is lined with vendors, the open field at the top of the hill is usually filled and several buildings house vendors as well ~ you never know what you will find!


{Welcome to White Cloud!}

{Grain elevator}

{White Cloud School/Museum}

{Home along Main Street ~ nice wood shingle pattern!}

Sparks, on the other hand, is even smaller and even less of a town than White Cloud ~ I think the population here is under 30! There are several buildings that look to be the start of a town, but it looks as if it never took off. I guess that when the flea market is not going on, it would be easy to drive by and barely notice the town at all.

A moment of panic as I saw a few raindrops, but lucky for me it never rained while I was shopping at either place! I managed to get a few shots of what the vendors had to offer ~ and my purchases as well ~ I will share those in my next posts!


{bank building at Sparks}

{Sarge & Bonnie welcoming me to Sparks!}

3 comments:

Joan@anthinggoeshere said...

Love the blue back building with the half round window. Were there cool things inside? also cute little pups.

Julie said...

Unfortunately, the vendor inside the neat building has never had anything I have been interested in ~ the building still has it's original tin ceilings and a built in safe. Maybe someone will restore it some day.....

Gina Martin said...

julie...so glad it didn't rain on you. i worried when it was pouring here! can't wait to see what you scored!