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During the process of looking for interesting Kansas pictures for a thread over on Galactic Cactus, I came across this site, which is cool enough that it deserves a thread of its own. Lots of interesting pictures of Kansas landscapes from the Kansas Geological Survey here, and they're indexed in some very handy ways. Well designed site--well, as far as the indexing and all that, anyway. The site itself looks a spare bones, despite the excellent content.
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Follow the link Dan. Common misconception. Kansas is actually boasts some very interesting landscapes.
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Are you telling me you can't see the beauty, the serenity, in that picture? How about this lovely one of waste from a lead mine?
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Note that I'm not trying to argue that large stretches of the state aren'tpretty darned flat. Just that there's more too it than just that, and that even the flat areas are often beautiful in their own way. Like this. Or this.
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I think the existence of a few cliffs and ridges in Kansas just goes to prove that it's not possible, even for God, to make a state COMPLETELY flat. But He sure gave it a shot.
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The Flint Hills are my favorite part of Kansas. I want SO bad to be able to get on a horse and just ride across them - miles and miles. It would be like stepping back in time over 100 years. (but most of the area is privately owned, so I would have to have permission to do that...)
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You know, Noemon, most all of these photos appear to be taken by the same person. (I notice as I go through them). They are okay, and kind of "report" what the state looks like, but I have seen much better, prettier and artistic photos of our state than this. So I hope not everyone judges it solely based on this library of one person's images...
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Bike across Kansas. Then tell me if this state is flat. Go from east to west if you want a challenge. If you really want a challenge, I get to pick the route.
I love the great plains prairie.
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Yeah FarmGirl, the pictures themselves aren't all that great, but I really like the way the site is organized.
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If you've got any good pictures lying around you should have Hobbes or somebody host them, and post a link to them in this thread.
I would also love to get on a horse and take off across the flint hills; they're just gorgeous, especially in the spring. I love driving along 35 at night while they're burning them too.
Ever been to the Konza Prairie, FarmGirl (or screechowl, or punwit, or T_Storm)? It's a great place to go hiking (and the experience will disabuse a person of any thoughts they might have had about KS being flat).
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So does Christy. But me, I'm a city-and-rivers kind of boy, so when I look at a prairie, what goes through my head is, "Gee. Somebody REALLY needs to mow that lawn."
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I lived in KS for 30 years (about 2 miles from here) and I can tell you that if you stand on a tuna fish can, you can see the back of your head. Posts: 692 | Registered: Feb 2000
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When I visit my family in Virginia now I keep looking for the horizon, but there are only trees. This disturbs me. On the other hand, fall foliage in much of Kansas is not outstanding.
Each place has its beauty.
The fall prairie turns its own colors of purple, browns, reds, and golds.
Our house is surrounded by prairie and we only keep a small area mowed. The prairie is a forest of its own kind.
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Yeah - DSH -- who are you? I can see you're not a newbie, but I guess I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you/reading your posts much...
Great to see a fellow "former" Kansan.
I see you're from Fort Wayne now -- my kids met a bunch of kids from Fort Wayne during their Mission week this summer, so they have a very good opinion of the people of your town now!
Well said, screechowl. When I visit the mountains or the forest, I think it is beautiful, but it doesn't take very long for me to feel slightly claustrophobic there -- I want my wide open skies and full sunrises and sunsets.
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I've pretty much loved every natural environment I've had the opportunity to experience. The plains, flinthills, and scrubwoods of Kansas, the Ozark flint hills, the woods of Ohio, the Florida everglades, the Gulf Coast of Florida, the natural areas outside of Austin and Houston, the coast of Lake Michigan, the Salisbury Plain, the rolling sheep pastures of Wales, its rugged mountains, the jungles of Northwestern Thailand--all of it has been breathtaking in its own way. I can't wait to see more. Hm. I'm going to have to go and hang out in the woods after work today, I can tell. Writing all of this has gotten me in the mood to be out in nature.
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Yeah, in 1991 my then girlfriend and I went to visit her dad in a little English village called Stowe on the Woad (I love that name), near Oxford. He let us take his car, and we spent two weeks driving from his village up to Caernarfon and back. It was really a great trip. We had no place we had to be, and no particular itenerary in mind, so we just drove around looking at whatever we found interesting. Probably my favorite part of the trip was spending a day hiking up a mountain/hill to see the ruins of a Roman hill fort, only to discover, once we reached the top, that the Roman hill fort was on the next mountain/hill over. The thing we'd climbed had the ruins of a bronze age hill fort at the top, but it was far enough gone that it was basically just some rocks lying around on the ground. You couldn't make out the foundations or anything. It was very cool though, and there was a moment, when the clouds parted (the tops of these moutain/hills were wreathed in cloud) and for a moment we could see the Roman ruins illuminated with this gorgeous late afternoon light.
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Go to Lawrence, TStorm, and take highway 59 south of town a few miles to Wells Overlook. It's basically a little park on a hill in the middle of a scrub wood, and it has an observation tower on it that it 5 or 6 stories tall. Great place to watch the sun set. Or rise.
Here's a picture taken from the top of the tower, facing south west.
Of course, I love looking at the hills surrounding the lake regardless of the time of day. I can't find a picture that shows it, but that area is especially beautiful in the early mornings, when the lowlands are completely shrowded by fog.
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I think I'm just in a kind of nostalgic mood period. But yeah, it probably is about time for a visit.
It just boggles my mind when people go someplace and can't see the beauty in it, you know? I mean, in my eyes there's beauty in pretty much every natural environment in existance, and in most human constructed environments as well. Even something like a polluted lake or stream can be beautiful if you look at it right.
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