Kansas, Part 3 - Kansas Rocks Too! [240428-0501]

In Parts 1 and 2, we visited 3 of the "8 Wonders of Kansas". Before leaving the state, we managed to hit 2 more along our path - one natural, and one man-made.

The winds buffeting the coach the previous night eventually subsided, but we woke to a somewhat chilly 50 degrees Sunday morning wondering why we hadn't flipped the sleep sack back into winter mode the previous evening. Since the day was scheduled as a short travel day, we did some grocery shopping at a new-to-us local grocery store ("Dillons", which apparently is owned by Krogers) before heading out on the road.

We definitely were well into the "flat" part of Kansas now, with the scenery consisting mostly of wheat fields on either side of the road. It actually was fairly uncommon to see green on both sides at once; the usual pattern was a brown unplanted field would be on the left and a young green field on the right, or vice versa - it took a bit of timing to find a stretch of road where there was green on both sides like this.

Occasionally we'd come across a "feedlot" - usually smelled long before seen - where a large number of cattle were housed together to fatten them up for slaughter.

In addition to the pens for the cattle, the lots had large quantities of grain and hay (or other types of feed roughage) on site as well.

We reached our accommodations for the next two nights, Lake Scott State Park, in the late afternoon and had no trouble finding a site in a fairly empty loop of the campground.

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Monday morning, we drove 23 miles northeast to Monument Rocks (another of the "8 Wonders of Kansas")

The rocks are technically on private land, but the owners are gracious enough to open access up to the public. We had the place completely to ourselves for almost the first hour, and took our time walking all around the first group and watching the swallows that built their nests up in the rocks.

(Hopefully this 3x speed video of an end-to-end walk isn't too nauseating to watch, but the speed-up was necessary to get the file below the 100 MB limit imposed by Blogger.)

The second group didn't quite have the same monolithic feel, but were impressive nonetheless.

If you used your imagination, some shapes could be found in the rocks - such as the Rebel gun turret at the top of this one...

...or this man in a funny hat gazing off into the distance.

Then we headed 15 miles west to Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park (which is quite a long name for such a small park). Similar to Monument Rocks, the Badlands are chalk formations and the park provides a 1.2 mile each way trail along the tops of a portion of them, which we hiked. (It would've been more interesting to hike down into the Badlands, but that isn't allowed 🙁.)

Back at Lake Scott SP, we decided to hike up one of the hills to see what the little house and rock at the top were. We don't think they were actually related, in the end. The house appears to be some sort of hiker rest shack along the trails that circle the lake; a stone hut with benches inside.

The rock was a memorial to the Steele Family.

Neither was particular interesting, but over the course of the day we logged 7.16 miles, 16,208 steps, and 224 ft of elevation gain; it felt good to have a hiking day of some sort!

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We were on the road again Tuesday morning, as were the high winds. Two and a half hours of driving brought us to the city of Victoria, and our final "Wonder of Kansas": St. Fidelis Church, aka the "Cathedral of the Plains" (you apparently have to use quotes around that because the church doesn't meet the strict definition of a "cathedral", since it isn't a bishop's church).

The church is absolutely gorgeous inside, and we actually went through it twice - realizing as we were signing the guest book on the way out the first time that there are little audio tour boxes mounted in four locations in the church. So we went back in to listen to the tour. Pressing the button on the boxes provided a much-louder-than-you'd-think-appropriate-for-a-church narration, so we were glad that we were the only people inside at the time.

The winds continued on into the afternoon's drive, where they blew the clouds into some fun shapes for a game of "what do you see in the sky?" - can you find the two old sheep, and the meerkat talking to a dog?

How many poodles can you find here?

In the late afternoon we arrived in Cawker City, where we visited a finalist in the "8 Wonders of Kansas" competition: the World's Largest Ball of Sisal Twine.

A visitor leaving as we were arriving told us that we could get free twine at City Hall to add to the ball. We couldn't pass up a chance like that to contribute our bit to this piece of history - and it gave us a chance to see a little more of the city.

A local artist had made versions of famous paintings, adding a ball of twine to each, which were displayed in various business around town.

(Unlike the previous one, you'll probably be glad that this video is at 3x speed.)

A few minutes up the road was our accommodation for the night: Glen Elder State Park. On our way in, a herd of deer passed in front of the van but we were a little slow on the cameras so this is the only photo we got (of the tail end of the group).

The primitive sites at Glen Elder were "non-designated", which apparently means "park wherever you want on the big ol' patch of lawn". The lawn wasn't very busy, so we were able to put a good amount of space between ourselves and our nearest neighbors. Surprisingly, there was free wi-fi available at our site, so we worked on the Kansas, Part 1 blog post late into the night.

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We woke to light rain Wednesday morning, and were delighted to find that the rain brought out the bunnies.

A 35 mile drive northward brought us the Geographic Center of the Lower 48 States. The little park there had 3 separate signs/markers so we're not sure where the exact "official" spot is, but we think it's where this flagpole sits since it has the most official looking plaque.