This summer I decided to show my teens some of the local things that we normally skip right past on our way to further away destinations. I picked locations anywhere from 10 minutes to 4 hours away from our house. I only picked outdoor attractions because we’re being as careful as possible to avoid exposure to COVID-19. We live in rural Kansas in the middle of the Midwest. Our state is thought of by many as just a fly-by area and I’ll be honest – I’m mostly drawn to the West and the Southwest so we almost head that direction when we take a family road trip. So I was pleasantly surprised to find some pretty neat things in our own backyard. I gave it a fancy name for fun. And I instituted it as an immediate tradition. So whenever the younger teen asked, why are we doing this? I replied, because it is a tradition! Whenever there is a pandemic, we see local things. He didn’t love my logic.
In order, here are the spots we visited this summer:
Operation See Local Things (because we aren’t going on a road trip this year) #1. Alcove Spring and Oregon Trail Crossing. The spring was burbling out from a spot lower down than the falls so it was a little hard to find. It was pretty with a short walk out to the spring and a very clear stream. The historical markers and wagon wheel tracks on the other side were pretty cool! The tracks are a little hard to see in places but I was able to stand in one depression that wagon wheels made more than 160 years ago. This one was about 45 minutes from our door.
Operation See Local Things (because we aren’t going on a road trip this year) #2. Rock City near Minneapolis, Kansas. I honestly thought this one might be a hoax the closer we got without any sign of it at all. About a mile from the location we finally saw a sign for it but the area still looked like normal farm fields all around. Then we turn onto a gravel road in between fields and it turns out it was not a hoax at all and erosion is weird. This one was about 1.5 hours from our backyard.
Operation See Local Things (because we aren’t going on a road trip this year) #3. Geary County Lake Falls. This one was pretty neat and way bigger than expected with the rock wall reaching taller than our two-story house. I never would have known to go looking for the falls from a simple visit and looking around the lake. This one was about 40 minutes from our backyard.
Operation See Local Things (because we aren’t going on a road trip this year) #4. Pillsbury Crossing. This is a natural rock river crossing into the valley where Manhattan, Kansas was founded in 1855. This is super fun spot to wade and swim and explore falls that can get really, really full in the afternoons. Crowded spaces are not something we wanted during a pandemic so we went at 8 am. This one was about 40 minutes from our backyard.
Operation See Local Things (because we aren’t going on a road trip this year) #5. Bala Park. This is a cool little park carved out of the edge of a farmer’s field with a huge old stone arch railroad bridge and playground equipment made from repurposed bits. I had never heard of it until I started looking around for local places to visit. This one was about 12 minutes from our backyard.
Operation See Local Things (because we aren’t going on a road trip this year) #6. The Allegawaho Heritage Memorial Park, the Konza Monument, the Kaw Agency ruins and the Rails to Trails that goes right past. Plus what is left of the Council Tree that the current town is named after. The teens were less than impressed with the tree stump. The rest of the spots we visited were a good lesson in forced relocation and the first peoples who lived in our area. This one was a little more than an hour from our backyard.
Operation See Local Things (because we aren’t going on a road trip this year) #7. Monument Rocks National Monument, Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park plus the furthest northern and eastern Pueblo ruins at Lake Scott State Park. Monument Rocks National Monument has 70 feet tall sedimentary formations of Niobrara Chalk also called the Chalk Pyramids. This one is in the middle of privately owned ranch lands. We approached it from the back side since I was tired of driving on the Interstate. With no signage about it the “nice lady in my phone” kept directing us further and further off the beaten path. We drove over at least two cattle guards and the road kept narrowing. 70 feet tall rocks are hard to miss but couldn’t see them at all until the road finally swerved around a large tree and up over a hill and there they were. The rocks were bigger than I had imagined by far. And on private land so the signs said things like “don’t honk at the cows” and “leave no trace”.
Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park is a brand new shiny state park with trails. The area looks quite a bit like a smaller painted desert to me with cliffs and hills made of chalk formations. In fact, this whole area had a very southwest feel with prickly pear cactus and yucca growing. I even found one very southwest plus Kansas spot where a sunflower is growing up through a yucca this season.
And Lake Scott State Park is beautiful nestled down between hills with fresh water and a spring and protection from some pretty constant winds out in that area. I can very much see how the Pueblo would have chosen the spot for building a permanent settlement.
These three things were the furthest out at about 4 hours from our backyard and all clumped together. So we did all three and made a day of it. I called it a “day trip” since we aren’t going on a road trip this year.
In a normal year, we seem to mainly visit things further away so this has been a good lesson about not overlooking what is right in front of us.
