Hiking through the Tallgrass Prairie

Tuesday Afternoon September 16, 2014
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
Strong City, Kansas

 

 

 

 

After spending time in the park’s really excellent and informative visitor center learning about the prairie and its natural history and then going out to see the beautiful original ranch buildings, we finally start our hike on the Southwind Nature Trail.  If you are interested in knowing something about what you are going to see in this post and haven’t read the previous one, you can find it here.  If you want to hop back and forth between the information and the pictures of the prairie just open two browsers and alt/tab between them.

There are several places to start out on the trail.  We go off behind the ice house.  It is labeled in the lower part of the map.  Then we follow the dark trail line around to the left, all around and ultimately over the stream, down to the school house and back to the ranch house along the original road.

There are a lot of fall wildflowers in bloom in the prairie today and the rocky ground is very evident on the path.  No wonder this land escaped the plow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many of the plants are as tall or taller than I and some as tall as David.

 

 

Looking out over the prairie you can see the the school house in the far distance.  The green trees clearly mark the creek line. The path we will bring back from the schoolhouse was the one the children living in the ranch house took to school.

 

 

We get up close and personal with the grasses, plants and insects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The colors of the grasses are just wonderful.  I never knew grass could be so interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We didn’t want to trample anything by going out into the fields to show the height but this should give you some idea.  Even the flowers are tall.  I wasn’t expecting as many flowers.  I was expecting much thicker grass. The flowers and grass are seriously intermingled.  But we have only had time to hike one trail so we can’t speak for the other 10,000 acres.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am a serious dawdler on this hike.  Everywhere I look there is some interesting flower or seed head or grass or insect going about his business.  I am captivated.   David is waiting for me at the bridge over the creek which begins the lollypop tail of the trail out to the school house (see map above)

 

 

I had seen pictures of Snow on the Mountain in the visitor center and it just looked like a made up plant, something you’d find in those plastic flower stores.  I never expected to see a huge stand of it in the prairie.  Luckily my zoom lens was working fairly well today so I could get some close up pictures of this amazing plant.  We see it more closely on the other side of the stream down the path to the school house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I catch up with David and enter into what must be a wonderfully cool oasis in the prairie summers.  The trees are primarily cottonwoods.

 

 

 

The prairie starts again just beyond the stream.  As soon as the land becomes dry, the grasses take over.

 

 

I am thinking perhaps wasps are the pollinators of Snow on the Mountain but it’s not spring so who knows why they seem to be so interested in it.

 

 

I wasn’t at all surprised to see these guys on the dry prairie soil.   What big eyes you have sir!

 

Providing a basic education for their children was a high priority for prairie settlers. Classes began here in the Lower Fox Creek School in 1884 and continued until 1930. Land for the school was donated by Stephen F. Jones the original owner of Spring Hill Ranch. The one room school was constructed of the same limestone that underlies its knoll.

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Notice the two doors.  No idea why unless it is one for boys and one for girls for some reason.  I thought the Shakers were the only ones who did that.

 

 

 

 

The long bench in the front of the room was a recitation bench. It was where teachers called students to recite their lessons: reading aloud, demonstrating their math skills, having their handwriting critiqued and practicing their geography. Seems we don’t teach 50% of these skills anymore. At the same time, the other students were quietly working at their desks preparing for their turn to be called to the front of the room. While they were waiting, they overheard the lesson being studied at the recitation bench. This was a great review of what they had learned previously or a preview of what they would learn in the coming years. It has been said that every child heard every lesson at least 8 times by the time they finished their eight years in the one room school. As a former teacher, this sounds like a terrific idea to me. Perhaps today’s students would have better memories, longer attention spans and more patience.   But as the calendar shows, that was in 1882.

 

 

 

Remember when they used to teach handwriting and people wrote letters which were actually lovely works of art??  The alphabet is all along the wall above the board in the back of the classroom.  In my elementary school, it was all along the top of the blackboard in the front of the room.  Did they teach handwriting when you were in elementary school?

 

 

 

Here’s the daily schedule.  Doesn’t look like music and “drawing” got any more time than than now.  Although they teach physiology, orthography and geography, none of which are taught today, it looks like reading got the bulk of the time.

 

 

Looks like these two are staying after class.  Can’t you imagine the trouble they caused.

 

 

 

 

After cleaning the erasers, we head back down the lollypop for the path back to the ranch house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end of the trail is some of the miles and miles of stone fence put up by Stephen Jones all around his property.  We spend some time looking at the different types of limestone used in the construction.  This interesting information on the six types of limestone is in the previous post.  You can see the ranch house in the background.

 

 

 

 

 

I am really sorry we do not have at least another day or two to spend in other sections of the park to see other areas and the bison herd.  I found the prairie to be a very calming and almost soothing place to spend an afternoon and know that I would be here a great deal if I lived in this area.  Not sure how much fun it is in the summer but it was wonderful on this fall day.

 

 

We’re spending the night in Emporia Kansas at the Emporia RV Park.  It is 20 miles further east on US 50.  Can’t say that I can highly recommend it.  It’s an OK place, the park itself is fine but $27 for water and electric right by two interstates (I-335 and I35) with a train next door that blows its horn about every 15 minutes, seems a bit on the high side to me.   I didn’t think there was anywhere in the country with that many trains any more.  But with no Walmart and no Cracker Barrel anywhere around we didn’t want to get too far off the highway for just one night.   We probably could have stayed in the parking lot at the Prairie if we’d asked.  We didn’t think to and by the time we left, everyone was gone.   So remember that if you come to visit in a low tourist time.

 

 

Our last stop before arriving in Virginia is 650 miles from here at Mammoth Cave National Park.  Normally we would do this in 4 days….about 160 miles a day….but we want to spend a few days at Mammoth Cave, we don’t want to arrive on a Friday at a walk in National Park and we need to get back to Virginia in less than a month.  So it’s 300+ miles for two days in a row.   I wonder if it will qualify for PDD Bronze?   Surely 650 in two days should don’t you think??