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| Tallgrass Prairie |
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| Ranch House |
Sight-seeing day for the humans---nap day for me. Temps got up into the high 80s again and it was sunny---I had lots of good sunny spots to choose from in the camper. We are in the Flint Hills of Kansas. The soils are too thin, too rock-strewn to make good farmland so cattle are the “crop” of choice. The humans went to Tallgrass Prairie National Historic preserve first thing this morning. (On the way they stopped at Nancy’s great-great grandmother’s grave.) The preserve protects a nationally significant remnant of the once vast tallgrass prairie and its cultural resources. It is the continent's largest remaining tract of tallgrass . On the preserve is a Victorian ranch house that Stephen F. Jones spent the modern equivalent of about $1.9 million building. The building was open for tours. The original ranch was called Spring Hill Ranch. On the preserve there is a herd of buffalo and other native species. (Which my humans didn’t get to see because the tour bus wasn’t running todayL.
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| Courthouse at Cottonwood Falls |
Next they drove South to Cottonwood Falls, the county seat of Chase county, and then on to Bizaar. At one time more cattle were shipped out of Bizaar than any other place in KS and it is where Knute Rockne’s plane crashed in 1931. Today it is just a wide spot in the road. They returned to Cottonwood Falls and spent some time at the historical society there. (Nancy found some info she was looking for, which means I may have to fight her for the computer this evening---because she is going to want to do genealogy. Guess someday I ought to trace my family tree….wonder who my father is, but I digress…….)
They stopped back at the camper to give me a treat and then they were off to tour the home of a famous newspaper editor, William Allen White, (it was closed) and then to the local zoo. It was a tiny zoo, but well done with some neat animals and great landscaping and plantings.
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| Prairie Dog at Emporia Zoo |
Tomorrow we head north.
