Prairie 8/2/2018

On the way to our stop for the night in Homewood, KS, we visited the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Located in the Flint Hills, it protects a small portion of tallgrass prairie that once covered this continent. Of the 400,000 square miles of tallgrass prairie that used to exist, only about 4% remains, mostly in the Flint Hills of Kansas. The Preserve used to be the Spring Hill/ Z-Bar Ranch. It's a different kin
d of National Park in that it is under public-private management of the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy.

The ranch home and farm buildings are open to the public for self-guided tours. The buildings are all made of Kansas limestone, the most common rock here, recalling that Kansas was under the sea epochs ago. The limestone formed from ancient marine deposits. (As an aside, in Kansas, it was

common for land owners to use limestone fenceposts rather than wood which was a scarce commodity.) For its day, the house was a grand work of art.

We took a loop trail that meandered through the prairie and a bison pasture. We were wary of coming too close, as we passed a lone bull. We saw many of the herd at a distance. It's a wonderful and unique experience (for us, anyway), to stand in an open field, and see the horizon in all directions, not a tree or bush in sight. Field met sky everywhere we looked. It's not hard to imagine the thundering sound of a herd of thousands of bison, just beyond view, over the hilltop. But we walked in the peaceful quiet of the prairie, with the only sounds being the grasshopper sparrows and meadowlarks that flew up from the grass as we passed.

Photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7pXWYTrKq3WsfATU6