Prairie Dog State Park, Norton
Wednesday, 7 October 2020
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| today's route |
Colby
I ended up not going into the museum for several reasons. Partly, it was their signs (and info on their website) making it clear pets were not welcome. I could understand why they wouldn't want folks walking dogs out into their prairie exhibits, but they were so emphatic I thought they might frown on me walking the dogs in their parking area too. I've walked the dogs in parking areas for museums in every state I've visited so far and got grumpy at the idea this place was really that special. The entrance fee of $6 for seniors wasn't out of line, though it made me grumpier to think of paying it in a place where I couldn't let my dogs out. But the thing that really got me was their road signs.
They had major signs along the highway, at the exit, at the left turn after the exit, along the road - and then no sign for the turn to a side road. I had Google's directions, but of course I don't always trust them and the museum's signs had been so prominent. I felt abandoned. After I'd driven more than a mile farther than I'd expected with no museum or sign in sight, I turned around to follow Google and going in this direction I saw a turn-off sign. So I turned but then, once again, they abandoned me. Even Google wasn't clear about where I should go when I got to a T intersection. I found it by spotting a sign way down the street. Probably unreasonable of me, but I think if a private entity really wants me to visit - enough to put up highway billboards - then it can take the trouble to be sure I can get there with a few smaller signs too. I was peeved I'd had to hunt for it. So that, followed by the NO PETS signs all around the place and the entrance fee - well, I just didn't feel like finding out what they had to tell me. Yes, I've heard the expression "cutting off your nose to spite your face" and that crossed my mind as I was turning around in their parking lot. But I left.
The dogs and I went down the road and found somewhere else to take a walk.
I stopped at a Love's for gasoline a couple of miles from the museum, and the very young clerk there was wearing a mask that said, "Calm Down Karen, It's Allergies."
Let me first say that I've got a problem with that name having been appropriated to refer to (mostly) middle-aged angry entitled white women, because there's no one in the world nicer than my cousin Karen. And I know this phase must be hard on real people named Karen because I grew up in the "dumb blonde" era and have been dealing with the stereotype all my life. But I also know people have looked askance at me because my asthma is the type that makes me cough a lot and they make it clear they wonder if I have the coronavirus.
All that having been said, I thought it was really interesting to find this situation: a young white woman, in small-town Kansas, working at a gas station, wearing a mask, making fun of people who overreact to reasonable behavior by others.
While I was at the gas station, I spotted a house on the next street that seemed unusual in this town.
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| This is a typical house in Colby. |
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| This house, across the street from the other, somehow seemed very different. (You may want to enlarge it for the full effect.) |
Back on the road
Several times I saw hawks sitting on irrigating machines. In this area, there's a lot of corn and the stalks are still so high that a hawk sitting on a fence post wouldn't be able to see prey. Not that there are many fence posts to sit on, and there're no trees or utility poles for them either, so they've opportunistically accepted irrigating machines as a perch.
For some reason, I expected to see wheat in Kansas, not corn. And there is a lot of wheat, which I'd be able to see if this were August, not October. But there's also acres and acres of corn. And suddenly, I heard in my head, "I'm as corny as Kansas in August," and thanked the genius of Richard Rogers (and Oscar Hammerstein) once again for hitting the nail on the head.
We were traveling northeast on US 83 (Monday's road), aka K-383. In Kansas, the state highways are designated by the initial K only, not the postal abbreviation other states use. They always put the hyphen in. And the highway department often puts them on those highway mileage signs, in a list with towns that are coming up. I saw one sign that said it was x miles to this town, y miles to K-something, and z miles to another town, just as if the state highway was a destination. I don't remember seeing signs quite like that in other states.
Actually, for me, the state highways have been something of a destination, because I'm getting directions from Google and have to pay even more attention than usual to where it's sending me. In Kansas, the county roads are usually gravel. In fact, lots of roads here are gravel, and most of those are washboard. I know nobody likes driving on washboard roads, but it's especially hard when, like me, you're carrying your house around with you, including a whole lot of things that aren't found in your standard passenger vehicle - like pots and pans, like the pets' water dish. Most state roads have been paved, and I've learned to look for them.
Google's algorithms want to take the shortest route to anywhere, even if the shortest route sends people down gravel roads. The algorithms don't seem to know they're gravel and expect anyone would prefer to go that way vs. driving a few extra miles on nice, smooth, paved roads. I've had to argue with it a few times about that. So when Google tells me to go down - say - KS 261, I stop to take a look on their satellite view. Google always uses KS, instead of the K that Kansas uses, so I'm suspicious of what they're telling me.
We stopped for a lunch break at the "City Park" in Selden, established 1888, they say. Current population is maybe 213. This park is basically a roadside rest area and is long and narrow, but the town probably does use it for gatherings, because there's a large-ish parking area and a large-ish covered picnic area and lots of trees. It was nice for us, giving the dogs a few trees to sniff and a place to walk, however small.
I found this photo online, and you can see how those spires caught my eye. This church goes by the rather ponderous name of Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and is in the tiny, unincorporated town of Leoville. Makes me figure Leoville might once have been much larger than it is now, to support such a large church having been built here. It also makes me think there are an awful lot of Catholics in this area.
The president has many enthusiastic supporters in this part of the state. I passed many pro-Trump flags, most saying, "Trump 2020 No More Bullshit," though one said, "Drain The Swamp 2020," which I thought seemed ambiguous, given the number of administration figures in just 4 years who've been outed for improper use of federal money, serious conflicts of interest, and just plain criminal behavior. But I'm pretty sure they were pro-Trump too and are assuming all that stuff is just fake news.
As I'm going north, I'm finding October colors are becoming widespread. Lots of yellow and gold, and in today's sunshine they're even more brilliant than usual.
I came to a town with the sign: "Welcome to Jennings - Czech Us Out." Wikipedia says Jennings has 92 residents, presumably with a Czech background.
Only a few miles from tonight's campground, I passed a picnic area/boat launch for Keith Sebelius Lake and decided to stop and walk the dogs again, so when we got to the campground they wouldn't insist on instantly being taken out (actually, they do anyway, but stopping here would reduce my guilt level for not doing it to near zero). It was a nice rest area and had a sign that said they allowed 24-hour camping there - quite unusual when most rest areas say it's prohibited.
In a smaller offshoot of the lake on the other side of the road, I could have sworn I saw a mob of White Pelicans. They seemed so out of place, so I decided maybe they were geese instead. But the bird book says there are 2 goose species that are mostly or all white - the Snow Goose and the Ross's Goose. All 3 of these birds are seen in this part of Kansas during migration. But the pelicans are 2-3 times bigger than either of the geese types, so I'm pretty sure pelicans are what I saw.
Google's directions to tonight's campground are a great illustration for its mania for cutting corners and finding shortcuts. It said to turn right on Road N. I found Road N, and found it's not much more than 1 lane wide and, because it runs between cornfields, most of the road was taken up by a harvester machine. Imagine to yourself, as I did, what might happen if I turned down it and somehow were able to squeeze by this giant machine, only to drive a little farther and find myself facing an oncoming vehicle. I have trouble backing up in a parking lot, let alone a 1-lane road between towering cornstalks with a major impediment in the way.
Luckily, I'd already found a driving route for tomorrow that had me leaving by a different road, so I grabbed those directions. Turned out tomorrow's directions would have me leave by the main entrance to the park. In fact, I don't even know where Road N would access the park. Google can be really helpful, but it can't be trusted even to find the most sensible route, even to find directions to the front door of a business instead of the back door, even to find roads that exist instead of roads through cornfields. It thinks having a name makes it a thoroughfare, though even that doesn't matter as it often tells me to turn down a road it says has no name.
Prairie Dog State Campground
Then I got to Prairie Dog State Campground, which I'd chosen because I read they have a resident population of prairie dogs. They do, and it's very active and is spreading itself into neighboring fields. The park ranger told me they weren't native to that area but had been introduced by early residents. I learned later that my next door neighbors in the campground had a problem with prairie dogs on their Colorado farm and, of course, saw them as nuisances. But I thought they were really cute, reminding me a lot of chipmunks, and I took a bunch of photos.
I'll start with the educational part:
Those photos I got out of the RV to take. The prairie dog ones, though, I took from inside the RV, with the motor running because I was moving around to get a view, and I had to zoom in quite a bit to get something more than a dot. I picked out the photos that seemed least fuzzy, and there's still a selection.
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| I saw this view a lot because they're really quick to jump down their holes. |
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| a close-up from the side |
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| scattered around |
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| a scrum at a hole's entrance |
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| I saw this often, too. |
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| They're very watchful. |
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| Not another one in sight - but there're dozens there in their holes. |
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| Looks like a raid in progress. |
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| They blend in well - gives "low profile" a new meaning. |
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| And Dexter's reaction to it all . . . |
Dexter thinking chipmunks are the most fascinating creatures in the world made it a given he'd be interested in all these little guys running around. There must have been hundreds in this big field they lived in, and they've spread across the street to that other field you see in Dext's photo. As you might have noticed in one of those signs, both rattlesnakes and black widow spiders will set up shop for themselves in abandoned prairie dog holes, making the thought of walking out in this field extremely unattractive to me.
It was a refreshing interlude. Which it turned out I needed, because at the campground I found my campsite had already been taken by someone who came in after the office closed the night before, paid for 2 nights, plunked their trailer down on the site, and left for the day. I had to drive all the way back to the office to get another assignment, and they told me they'd make the people move if I wanted, because my prior reservation trumped their squatters' rights. But with the people having left for the day, that wasn't going to work, so I moved instead. But I told the office they needed a different system for allowing latecomers to pay for more than 1 night at a time. Otherwise, the campground was fine.
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