Interesting Stops Across Kansas

After Denisa's girl trip to Waco, Texas, she drove back to the Oklahoma panhandle. This is where Mark has been hanging out with his Mother. Denisa was glad that Mark had such a good baby-sitter while she was away.

Then we made yet another trip back to Kansas City. This is our fifth trip back to Kansas City from Oklahoma in the last couple months.  Since we're leaving from the panhandle of Oklahoma, we will drive the entire width of Kansas in the 6.5-hour trip. We wish we had counted the number of combines we saw, harvesting wheat all across the state.

As we neared Hutchison, Kansas, we saw an interesting road-side kiosk and decided to stop. We learned that the fertile wheat pasture on top has another valuable commodity underneath in this area. Mark is standing behind a 1,260-pound block of salt that was mined here.

The educational kiosk taught us that just two miles from here is the Morton salt company's plant. This recognizable little-girl-with-an-umbrella hangs out near Hutchison making the table salt we've used all our lives.

As we drove further east, the wheat fields turned into the flint hills and the tall grass prairie. We had passed by the Tall Grass National Preserve sign many times, but today we had the time to stop.

We had great timing, as the national preserve was hosting its annual hay-making demonstration this afternoon. 

Handsome teams of horses were hitched up and ready to demonstrate how this was done 100 years ago.

The sturdy horses pulling the all-metal swather made a nice picture with the old rock barn in the background.

There were several teams cutting the hay in the valley. We walked out in the just-mowed field to take a picture of this flat valley among the flint hills and the cloudy blue skies.

We also visited the three-story rock barn that is adjacent to the preserve's visitor center. Using an ingenious set of ramps, they could store and feed hay with a limited amount of lifting.

Plenty of rock is strewn about this tall grass prairie, and the settlers put it to good use fashioning stone fences.

The ranch house was also constructed from native stone in 1881. It is open to the public for self-guided tours as well.

We normally would have been interested in the trail system that winds throughout the tall grass preserve. But with temperatures close to 100 degrees, we opted for the bus tour instead. The semi-air-conditioned bus make the 3-mile trip to the highest point on the preserve a little faster (and just a little cooler) than we could walk it.

On the way, we passed the resident herd of bison. This picture was taken through a dirty bus window, but it gives a sense of what this area would have looked like 150 years ago before the bison were hunted to near extinction.

The bus stops at the scenic hill-top, where passengers can disembark and get a 360-degree view of the tall grass prairie. The wind was blowing around 30 mph, so the grass was really whipping. In fact, that butterfly in the foreground of the picture looked like a rodeo cowboy, hanging on to a bucking bronc.

The butterfly was so latched on to that bloom, that he didn't even notice when Denisa got close for this picture. We have to include the close-up because with the wind whipping that stem, she tried over and over to get one in focus. After twenty-some attempts, she got a clear shot of that butterfly in the wind.

Our bus driver mentioned that the question he is asked most is, "Where is the tall grass that this place is name after?" He explained that this time of year, the grass is about one foot in height. That allows for a myriad of other foot-high plants to have their season to bloom and thrive before they are shadowed by the grass that will grow to around five foot in the fall. He joked that the name of this national park should more accurately be "Tall in the Fall Grass Nature Preserve."

With the stops we made today, the usually long trip across Kansas was more interesting and educational. But we would be lying if we said we were making the trip for the views. We are returning to Kansas City again for another week to spend with our new granddaughter. She's changing every day, and we swear she has grown another pound since we saw her last week.

Mark got to spend a historic Father's Day in Kansas City. This was his first Father's Day as a grandfather. Sadly, it was also the first Father's Day since his own Father passed away. We have truly experienced the circle of life this year.