Coop's Corner: Riding the Tall Grass Prairie

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Riding the Tall Grass Prairie - Oct. 2011

As mentioned in a previous post, my trip to the Tall Grass Prairie area of central Kansas finally began in October this year. The Yamaha TW200 was loaded on the trailer, luggage, food, riding gear, extra tools, spare tubes, etc. were packed in the car with everything ready to go. By 6AM Saturday morning, I was headed southwest.

By mid-afternoon I was in Council Grove, driving up along the west side of the reservoir to the Canning Creek Campground. Concerned that since the weather had been so nice, I was anxious to find and get a campsite set up. I needn't have worried. There were a few sites taken but only a small fraction of the total sites were occupied. I took a short ride that evening after everything was setup, then took advantage of the fire-ring for a lovely campfire.

To see the many areas I'd both read about and learned about, loops were planned, all centered out from Council Grove. Proper thanks need to go to the Backroads Kansas forum for their huge archive of previous rides and maps. Each of 4 loops were named with color and essentially went out like the leaves of a clover. I'd wait for weather, mood, etc. to decide which one to take on which day. With 4 rides planned and 3 real days for riding, things were going to be left for another trip. My laptop was along, so the GPS Routes were very subject to change and easily altered.

Santa Fe Trail Marker
Daughter's of the American Revolution

Deciding to adjust my first day's ride, Sunday took me mostly South. It seemed a weekend day might be the best time to find the Tall Grass Prairie National Preserve the 'most' open and it was a 'must see' on my trip. Including the nearby Cottonwood Falls area would be a good place to start.

Two Min. Maint. roads converging, EXACTLY the kind of riding I was after

A very typical view, especially on my first day of riding. Note the ridge of gravel on one side. Speculation tells me that the grader moves that ridge from one side to the other with periodic road patrolling. As a woman quoted in Least Heat Moon's PrairyErth said, "This air hasn't been used before".

Describing the area as "flat" wouldn't really be accurate........

Working my way down towards Strong City; the National Park Service's Tall Grass Prairie Preserve, my goal. Much controversy brought the Preserve into being. Private land ownership rights, Big Government presence, etc. were issues changing and postponing the creation of a National area to preserve the largest native stand of tall grass prairie land in the country and many felt it was worth saving. I'll include a few photos I took while visiting the grounds, but the Preserve's website is the place to go if you want more info. The ranch was owned by Stephen Jones, the house built for $25,000, the barn and other outbuildings for $15,000 from locally quarried limestone, incredible sums for Kansas prairie construction in the 1880's.

Spring Hill Farm

Looking west from the second floor of the barn

Chicken House

A lithograph of the home from 1887.......

Back of the house, looking east, photo taken from near the chicken house

Leaving the Spring Hill Farm site, I headed south to Strong City and Cottonwood Falls, picked up some backroads and rode a section of old route US 50.

Old US 50, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe mainline just to the right.

All of the first day's ride here

3 comments:

Erik RJanuary 1, 2012 at 3:56 PM
Good story and nice pictures. I love the out in the middle of no where kind of places. Looks like the TW200 is the perfect bike for that.
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Martha November 26, 2012 at 8:49 PM
I SO much envy your trip here. So, so much. I have family buried in Council Grove KS.

I have a deep love of the tall grass prairie. It is an elegant and expressive landscape, but not everyone can see this.
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Coop a.k.a. CoopdwayNovember 26, 2012 at 9:07 PM
My time down there was awe-inspiring as I knew it would be; it's hard to describe the way the wide open makes me feel.....and I felt it in spades those lovely days.

Don't miss Day 2, 3 and 4 in "January 2012"
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Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)