I offer my sincere apologies to the State of Kansas. Ever since a cross country trip in my 20’s I have panned Kansas as flat and uninteresting. Turns out I was making the classic mistake of assumption based on the tiny snippet of Kansas I saw racing past my window on I-70. Pure laziness on my part!
Yesterday, we had an opportunity to travel most of the state via routes 50 and 56 – a far cry from the tedium of I-70. The highlight of the day was touring the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Flint Hills near Strong City. The preserve offers a little glimpse of what the great plains must have looked like before they were settled. 11 thousand acres of undulating grasses, native wildflowers, roaming bison, songbirds and other native species. It was breathtaking. This gardener could have walked the preserve all day long, lost amongst the grasses, trying to make heads or tails of the flora. Underlying most of the prairie appeared to be little bluestem (schizachyrium scoparium). It was only a foot or so tall during our visit, but by the fall it will be 4+ feet tall. I suppose it was good we made the trip when we did or we might have lost Hazel in the grass!
We hiked a very small portion of the preserve, to a lookout point that gave us a broad vista across the hills. We could make out a single bison on the horizon. The girls wanted to take a closer look but we assured them a bison up close wasn’t in anyone’s best interest (including that of the bison!). The path up to the lookout point was gravel but the trail we took from there was just a grassy footpath mown through the prairie. A cool breeze accompanied us on the walk, the prairie grasses swaying with the wind. In 1855 I imagine 80% of the average settlers day was either miserable or boring – but boy the other 20% must have been spectacular!
The path we took wound back to the visitors center via an old school house – the Fox Creek School House circa 1882. The building (pictured below) was a pretty little building on a small windswept rise overlooking a valley. An austere structure compared to our schools today. Many of us (me included) complain about the expansion “trailers” behind many of our school buildings – I might need to reframe my point of view on that account!
The rest of our day was spent passing wheat fields and included a brief stop at Fort Larned. The Fort, established in 1859 on the Santa Fe Trail to keep peace on the plains, was in excellent condition. A great stop to teach the girls a little bit about Manifest Destiny, settlement and the conflicts that inevitably arose with the Native people already here.
I simply can’t imagine what it must have been like to cross the plains in a wagon. Grateful for our small taste of what the journey might have looked like – equally grateful for paved roads and an airconditioned RV! Many thanks to Kansas for smooth passage, beautiful scenery and a taste of what North America must have looked like over a century ago.
Westward we journey!
The school house reminds me of what the school house in the Little House on the Prairie books would have looked like. What a pretty building! Safe travels friends!
Thanks Wendy!
I have really enjoyed theses posts and especially love the flower photos since that is what I do all the time too! In fact, I broke my ankle leaning over to take a photo at Jenny Lake at the Grand Teton National Park last fall! It is wasn’t even a decent photo. Ha! Thank you for this post – I had the wrong impression about Kansas as well.
Breaking your ankle in pursuit of art is true devotion!!
I need to spend more time in the middle 😊
The middle is beautiful too 🙂
Dear Carolyn,
I hadn’t read your Kansas piece on my first time through the blog, but when I did, I remembered a wonderful time I had once in Kansas City (Missouri, unfortunately) and it made me hope that the family will be coming back through these parts later in your trip. I was working for a chain for sports magazines years ago and was sent to the Kansas City Chief’s summer training camp to interview a recent draft choice who had just left Temple University in Philly. He was the first All-American the Owls had had in eons, and great things were expected of him by the locals, which was the excuse for the story. His name was Paul Palmer, and the fact that you can’t remember him tells you how long ago this was. It was a tough trip because I didn’t have much time to prepare for the interview and was leaving one of the kids behind with mono, but the fee was good and Philadelphia Magazine was paying all expenses. When I got to KC, I found that the training camp was in a tiny town known only for it and a Disney World bank that pretended to be the first one robbed by Jesse James and his brother after the Civil War.. When I checked into the camp, things were in full swing, but no one was talking about Palmer, the first draft choice, which seemed a good reason to start by sniffing round t see what was up. Palmer was running with the uncounted on bunch of players, and when I watched the drills, I found him not paying much attention and doing poorly when he had a chance to carry the ball. We were finally introduced by the running backs coach, who urged an interview that very night (a bad sign), but Palmer wanted to put it off until the end of my week in camp (an even worse one). As the days went on, Palmer showed less and less on the field and pushed our talk further off, which caused me to buttonhole the team’s GM with questions about what might be up. Nothing good, he said, because the team had decided that Palmer was already a bust and meant to cut him at the end of the week. Once that word got out, players began to seek me out, first to commiserate over the lack of a Philly-centric story and then to suggest things I might do to sooth my broken heart. One invited me to go with his wife and kids to the team’s family night in the KC stadium on Friday, and four others offered to take me to lunch on Saturday and then to the airport for the flight home. Family night remains a sweet memory, but Saturday’s lunch provided me with another recommendation for your days on the road–if, of course, you’ll back some day to cross the Kansas/Missouri border. The guys took me to a famous BBQ spot that I’d heard of most of my adult life (thanks to the food writing of Calvin Trillin, a fixture in NY magazine circles and a long time food and travel writer for The New Yorker). [Look him up; you’ll be amused, I think, especially by a book called Alice, Let’s Eat.] The place is called Arthur Bryant’s BBQ, and the address is: 1722 Brooklyn Avenue, Kansas, City, MS 64127 [816-231-1123]. The website is: http://www.arthurbryantsoriginalbbq.com. Ribs are the specialties of the house, but it also offers brisket and chicken and a passel of veggie-based side dishes, which should please the veggie devotee in your bunch. There are also quite a few deserts. As far as my wife and I are concerned, however, the reason to go to Bryant’s is the sauce, a thick, rich, sophisticated thing that is savory without a bit of sweetness. For years after my first trip, my wife and ordered it by the case from the restaurant.
Happy Trails,
Jim Nechas
PS On my first trip to Bryant’s, I was greeted by a local newspaper cartoon as I came in the door. It showed the recently dead Arthur being greeted at the pearly gates by St. Peter, who asks, anxiously, “Did you bring the sauce?”
Loved the 80/20 comment on boredom vs. awe. 🙂