Texas was hot! And we have to be in Chicago at the end of June. So we headed due north.....it took a lot of miles to be cooler.
This pictured couple was found smiling in the cooler Iowa rain. We found them in the Papajohn Sculpture garden in DesMoines.
This fellow lives in Wichita. His quite magnificent presence, sculpted by a native American, sits on (in) sacred ground at the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers.
Our friend, Sheryl, a Kansas native, suggested that we head northeast and visit the Tallgrass National Preserve in Kansas' beautiful Flint Hills. A LOT of other folks told us we'd be really bored. After all, grass is just grass, right? We went anyway and to our untrained eyes at first -- yep, just grass. But nope -- Plains have short grass species and prairies have tall grass species. There's a rich geologic and westward expansion history living here. We weren't bored....
Tiny Council Grove, KS lured us in with a gorgeous ACOE lake with campsites and some nifty history. It's name tells it all -- In 1846 there was a council in a grove of Oak trees between the Kansa (AKA Kaw) nation and the US government. Depending on who you ask it led to an agreement in which the Kaw either sold or granted an easement to some 20,000 acres of their land, in exchange for its use in perpetuity as long as travelers on the Santa Fe trail got safe passage. That was all good until 1901 when the Kaw Allotment Act forced the Kaw onto 20 acres in Oklahoma. So much for perpetuity.
Council Grove camp site and sunrise.
This really goofy looking structure once stood as a tall, distinctive oak in the grove. Santa Fe Trail travelers tucked letters, maps, and such in its nooks and knotholes for those who came behind, thus dubbing it The Post Office Oak. The tree died in 1990 at age 270, leaving just this stump that now sports a silly-looking protective awning.
Four Volksmarches.
We managed to walk four Volksmarches -- Wichita, KS, Lincoln, NE, DesMoines, IA, and Madison, WI, bringing our all-time total to 81. Three of these four brought our US Capital cities total to 31.
To prove we were really there:
Lincoln, NE -- looks more like a European cathedral than a US capitol. Incredible marble mosaic floors. We were definitely most impressed with this building and with the city.
The Library in Iowa's Capitol is Fantastic. The capitol itself is impressive. Ryan, a great story telling tour guide, assured us it has a bigger, more gilded, dome than Colorado's capitol. OK then.... He also took us to the catwalk on the interior base of that dome. Narrow, really high, a bit scary.
Madison Wisconsin's Capitol. Its claim to fame is having the only granite covered dome. And it sits on an isthmus between two lakes. Like Washington DC, diagonally directed streets radiate from the capitol, intersecting the orderly grid of other streets. Took us a minute to orient. State street, packed with restaurants and lots of other shops, headed to the UW campus. That's where we met the UW Badger.
We look for street art.
"Art Alleys" are a thing that are popping up in many town we visit. Local artists supply the art. This creepy fellow was balancing in Wichita.
Love the whimsey of these statues. The fellow walking around without his shoes -- they were sculpted across the way, under a bench --was in Wichita. The statue kids were playing in Lincoln.
Small Adventures:
We saw Love's Labor's Lost in a cemetery stable in Lincoln. Local and talented Shakespeare group . We talked to the director for a while who correctly surmised that we'd never seen Shakespeare in a cemetery before. No photos of the actual play were allowed.
We walked a pedestrian bridge over the Missouri River between Omaha, NE and Council Bluffs, IA. Great little Lewis and Clark museum at the Omaha end. Bizarre big-footed, non-gendered, tin foiled humanoid is seemingly searching the sky at the Iowa end. We found no explanation.
Northward we go -- still seeking the cool in the midst of the 2024 heat dome!
Retirement Lesson: Its always interesting
WOYAYA
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