Starting the day early at 8:30 am in Hays, Kansas, gave us 56-degree weather and clear skies for the beginning of our drive and the goal of reaching Arkansas tonight. The landscape before us fully met our imagination of Kansas topography, flat and a view for miles! The cultivated fields are already bringing forth green shoots and look like a luxurious green carpet leading out from the road to the horizon.
Oil drilling rigs, wind generators, and Eastern cottonwood trees share the view with farm homes and fields.
The Eastern cottonwood trees are sprouting their leaves more and more as we drive east. They were landmarks for pioneers traveling west, indicating water along creeks and rivers, shade, and a place to rest. Prefering moist soils, these trees, however, tolerate heat, drought, and harsh winters, all conditions Kansas regularly delivers. Evidence of wildfires was also visible with strikingly green fields covering wide areas where the fires had spread, in contrast to other nearby fields still covered with dry, brown grass.
We spied five horses standing in the shade of an R.V. park's billboard early on. Later, there was antique farm machinery sporting a sign that read "BANKERY" meaning it was a cottage or home-based business selling homemade baked goods directly to consumers.
Kansas has an abundance of both modern-day wind generators and the older windmills across the fields we passed. The newer one is for electricity, and the older one is for pumping water. Often, we saw the windmills providing water for livestock. Here I captured a photo of both the old and the new together.
In Park City, Kansas, we passed "Thyssenkrupp Aerospace" which focuses on metals distribution, processing, and logistics for aerospace manufacturers within the U.S. distribution network. Near Wichita, Kansas, we passed an unusual, white geodesic home. Finally, in Fredonia, Kansas, I got a photo of one of the many grain storage facilities we saw along our route today.
We passed through Missouri briefly on today's route, where it is easy to see the layers of stratified rock exposed by highway cuts through the rolling Ozark Mountains. Hundreds of millions of years of sediment piling up in ancient seas here were followed by a slow uplift. Exposed by road construction and through natural, deep erosion, it is an interesting introduction to geology.
We ended our day in Fayetteville, Arkansas, at what appeared to be rush hour. Grateful to arrive at our reserved Great Western Inn lodging for the night, we ordered in from Pizza Hut and called it a day.
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