A Little More Prairie Lovin: A Day @ Tallgrass National Prairie Preserve

Hey there friends! Ok so I know that my last post was about a prairie place...but I've been in the area and I've been trying to hit the best places so I'm going to post a second prairie adventure in a row.

If you've ever done much travelling through Kansas, you'll know that there aren't any major national parks. But there are a few National Park Service-owned properties, and Tallgrass National Prairie Preserve is one of those places. The preserve is near Strong City, Kansas, in a relatively quiet part of the state. I took a trip over for the day - I visited once before, but I was fairly young - and even though I had all day, I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do. Tallgrass has something for just about anyone. In recent years, they have gotten a brand new visitor center, complete with some displays about the history and geography of the prairie and a video about the history of the park. The original house, schoolhouse, and barn still stand on the property and available to tour. Then, for anyone not wanting to go on a long hike, there are three short trails around the front part of the property. Farther out, though, are the longer trails. These trails are somewhere between 3 and 13 miles each, depending on which trail you choose. To view a trail map, click here. Trails range in surface from gravel to grass to dirt. The preserve also has a herd of bison, and if you chose the Sceni
c Overlook Trail, you walk right through the bison pasture. Of course, you have to stay away from the bison, but it was amazing to get to walk past a herd of bison and watch them interact with each other and their environment - and even me, as they looked up to watch the foreigner in their world. I connected a few trails to
gether to get about 8 miles of hiking in while I was there.

Although I occasionally passed other visitors, it was nice to get away and enjoy the solitude of the open prairie. The park features one particularly touching quote, written in the 1880s by a Kansas newspaper editor, D.W. Wilder:

"Whenever you stop on the prairie to lunch or camp, and gaze around, there is a picture such as a poet or painter never succeeded in transferring to book or canvas...[We] ought to have saved a...Park in Kansas, ten thousand acres broad - the prairie as it came from the hand of God, not a foot or an inch desecrated by 'improvements' and 'cultivation'. It is only a memory now."

In a way, the National Park Service has accomplished Wilder's dream through Tallgrass. I mean, sure, there are old stone fences running across the pastures, and the old house still stands, and the land has been fundamentally changed by humans over the past 150 years, but at least now a piece still stands, preserved for future generations. A reminder of what things used to be like, a remnant of our heritage. And isn't that what public lands and the National Park Service are all about? Saving a piece of what we value for the future?

I think that is a beautiful thought. And I think D.W. Wilder would be proud of that, too.

I'll leave you with that for today. For more information on the park, click here. I sincerely you get a chance to check out the prairie and all ts beautiful solitude.

Happy wanderings! - GG