Road Trip 2015 Missouri to Kansas

We left Independence this morning and headed for Hays, Kansas where we will spend tonight. We will travel through Kansas City and half way across Kansas. This will be a short day of travel.

We were expecting to see nothing but flat open spaces when we got to Kansas. Not so.

The landscape is flat, but there are some trees around well kept farms.

In fact, the forests in Kansas are so scarce that wood for fence posts was not available to early settlers. The fence posts in this photo are made from cutting limestone into post shapes. Many of these posts are still in use today.

Kind of looks like Wyoming, but this is Kansas and is much greener.

One of the major crops (other than wind mills for generating electricity) is sorghum.

We saw acres and acres of this red topped plant used for making syrup, molasses, ethanol, and cattle feed. It is also a gluten free grain.

This Service Area was the only one where we found a storm shelter

As we got closer to Colorado, the country became more arid.

We spent the night in Hayes. Tomorrow we will be in Greeley, Colorado and stay with Jani Malkiewicz and Robbyn Wacker.

Comments

Lake Creek Trail

Several years ago (probably more like 8 or 9) Shirley and I went camping with friends in the Lake Creek Campground, Salmon Challis National Forest, (about 60 miles from our home in Mackay, Idaho). Our friends went some where with their kids fishing, so we decided to check out the trail to the chain of Lake Creek lakes: Round Lake, Long Lake, Big Lake, Rough Lake, Golden Lake, etc.. Well we got up the trail about 6 miles or so and the trail being so rocky and rough and because we were both on one 4-Wheeler, we decided to turn back to camp. Also, no one knew where we were because we left after our friends had gone and we had been out several hours. We never got to any of the lakes, and always wondered what the rest of the trail was like and what the various lakes looked like. Well, a few weeks ago, we got to find out! Our son Dirk called and said that he and his family would like to go camping for the weekend. They wanted to camp at the Lake Cr...

Yellowstone Park is in Idaho?

I am an Idaho resident by birth and have lived in Idaho most of my life (spent about a year in Utah but am trying to forget about that - I was only 3 years old at the time and had no choice). I have always said and continue to say there is no National Park in Idaho. Oh sure! The map of Yellowstone Park shows a small portion along the Wyoming border as being in Idaho, but how many people know how to even get to this portion of the Park? If you look at the above map, there are no attractions at all listed in the Idaho part of the Park! There are no major roads from Idaho into the Park. Main Park entrances are from either Montana (3 entrances) or Wyoming (2 entrances) Any way, my wife Shirley and I have been taking our children and grand children to Yellowstone Park for forty years using one of the main Park entrances. This year three of our sons who live in Idaho talked us into going with them and their families into the Idaho part of Yellowstone. This is ho...

Wayne Darlington Mining Visionary

WAYNE DARLINGTON MINING VISIONARY It could be said that Wayne Darlington was the visionary who saw the potential for the mining of copper in the Alder Creek Mining District. “Mr. Wayne Darlington, one of the most successful and experienced mining engineers in America, was for five years in charge of John William Mackay’s mining properties.” (Harper’s Weekly – 1907) Wayne MacVeagh Darlington was born on March 3, 1862 in Pennsylvania. The early 1880s found him in Idaho. Idaho State mine records show that Darlington had a theory that smelting rock containing the copper ore would be an effective way of recovering the copper. Darlington persuaded some New York investors to help finance his operation. Upon securing financing, a 50 ton per day through put smelter was built and operated from late 1890 to February 1891. Darlington would have been about 28 years old at that time. The smelter produced about 200,000 pounds of base copper bullion by di...

Wayne's Reflections