Kansas, Part 1 - Short Grass, Fluffy Cows, and Giant Mushrooms [240423-25]

We're spending a bit of time in Kansas, so our time here will be split across a few posts.  This first one will cover our first couple of days.

Our first impression of Kansas after crossing the border just before 3 p.m. wasn't that it was particularly flat (the section bordering Missouri actually isn't), but rather that it seems to have an awful lot of cemeteries by the side of the road.  For a while, it seemed like we were passing one every 10 or 15 minutes.

We continued on to our destination for the next day for a "sneak peek" even though we knew that it'd be closed by the time we arrived around 5 p.m.:  the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve (one of the "8 Wonders of Kansas").  As expected, all the buildings were already locked for the day so all we could do was read the signs outside the Visitor Center, and look at the prairie out back.

In case you can't read the text in the bottom left corner of that sign, it says "Tallgrass prairie can actually grow quite tall, sometimes exceeding eight feet!  But only in autumn after a favorable spring and summer growing season do grasses reach this impressive height."  Apparently in late April, the prairie grass is shorter than our lawn at home is.

For our accommodations that night, we stayed at Chase State Fishing Lake:  a lake run by the Kansas Department of Wildlife & Parks that allows free FCFS overnight camping along one shore.  The road to the lake is dusty gravel, so a lot of the black parts of the T42 were more of a light gray color by the time we made it to the lake - but there was only one other camper when we arrived and we picked a site on the opposite end of the camping area from them, and had a sizeable swath of lake to ourselves.

Our site even had a natural fishing pier, which many water birds frequented - including this Great Blue Heron.

A warm wind blew most of the evening, so we grilled and ate dinner outside while we watched the sun set.  We were amazed that there were no bugs next to the lake.

Apparently it was the wind that had been keeping the bugs at bay because after the sun set the winds stopped and the bugs came out.  As we had heard from other Travato owners, bugs can make it around the edges of the van's accordion bug screens so we spent some time that night killing mosquitoes and other flying insects that had snuck in (oddly, the mosquitoes were content to buzz around the lights or hang out on the ceiling instead of biting us).  Tom maintains that the electronic fly swatter is "the best invention ever".

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Wednesday morning, we stopped in the little town of Cottonwood Falls on the way back to the Preserve.  We had noticed its cute little cobblestone main street as we drove past the evening before, and wanted to come back for a closer look.

The historical marker out front indicates that this courthouse in Cottonwood Falls is the oldest Kansas courthouse still in use (built in 1873, replacing the original log cabin one from 1859).

We also wanted to check out some of the cute little shops along the main street, but apparently Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the "weekend" in Cottonwood Falls, and almost everything was closed.

We thought this was a cute/quaint little piece of middle-America, though (note the beagle statues bottom-left of center).

Leaving town, we hit a little "Cottonwood Falls commute traffic" though.  Just like Winnie the Pooh stuck in hole he can't get out of, a truck followed his GPS around a corner and down a street that was much too tight for the oversized load he was carrying.  For a minute we all sat there wondering what to do, but Google Maps found us an alternate way around so we left them to work the problem out on their own.

Back at the Tallgrass Prairie Natural Preserve, we started our tour in the old three-story limestone barn.

The middle (main) floor was converted into a museum with displays describing the original Spring Hill Farm and Stock Ranch and the transition from open grazing to fenced ranch farming, as well as displays of antique farm equipment.

The lower floor contained the stables.

Next we toured the Ranch House, which was built in 1881.  Built into a hillside, it is 3 stories from the front, and 2 from the back.

The lower floor contains the formal entry, and two parlors for entertaining.

There's actually an intermediate floor in between the visible first and second, that contained a (remarkably small) kitchen, root cellar, and passageway to a spring room where running water from a spring kept perishables "refrigerated".

The second floor contained the ranch office, dining room, and sitting room while the top floor contained the bedrooms.

Where were the bathrooms, you might ask?  The outhouse was a separate building out back (where there was also a separate curing house for preserving meat).

Afterwards we went down the hill to the much more modern Visitor Center to browse the displays there, that were more centered on the geology, flora, and fauna of the Flint Hills area and the prairie.

Then it was time view the fluffy cows (aka bison or buffalo) that live out on the prairie.

The trail map showed that the path the went by the bison area to the "scenic overlook" was just shy of 3 miles long, so we potentially were looking at a 6 mile round trip.  Luckily, the bison ended up being a lot closer than that.  We actually encountered 3 groups of bison.  The first was a group of 5 grazing on a hill side in the far distance.  Then we came across a group of about 15 grazing not too far off of the path.

The a little farther down the path was a herd of 50+ hanging out.

Among the larger bison in the herd were a few calves as well.

From there we travelled another 2 hours west to our next stopping place for the night:  Kanopolis State Park.

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Thursday morning the forecast was for thunderstorms and the road to our next attraction was a packed dirt one that we didn't want get stuck in when it turned into mud, so we got up early and drove 15 minutes up the road to Mushroom Rock State Park.

Since there wasn't much else to do with the impending rain, we drove another half hour up the road to the town of Marquette where we parked outside the public library (which was closed 🙄) and worked on the "Missouri Part 3" blog post using the library's Wi-Fi.  Finishing the post at around 6:30, we walked to the local market to look for a treat to reward ourselves (and support the local economy), and spotted this mural on the way back.

Then we drove another 45 minutes south to the town of Hutchinson where we'd be staying the night in the parking lot of the next day's venue:  Strataca.