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Showing posts from 2020

Badlands National Park

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  We have driven on the outskirts of the Badlands National Park several times over the years.  Usually while rushing from one side of it through to the other.  Usually on Interstate 90, which skirts the north side allowing only a distant view.  This year we chose to stay and look around a bit.  We were returning west, from our dog days of summer drive through the mid-west. Not finding a campsite in Cedar Pass, we landed at a very nice KOA at Interior.  It was a bit of an oasis along the White River, several miles outside the park itself.  We had a nice base from which to explore the park. At first view, I was struck with how those settling the west would have been thankful for the wide expanse of prairie that surrounds them.  And how the native inhabitants, the Arikara and the Lakota, would also be thankful for the shelter the land could provide. Today it’s inhabitants, the bison, prairie dog, pronghorn, and the coyote thrive and survive.  W...

Kanopolis Lake Kansas

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We have spent the last three nights at Venango Campground at Kanopolis Lake located southwest of Salina.   Kanopolis Lake is an early Army Corps of Engineer water project in Kansas.  It impounds the Smoky Hill River for flood control and agricultural purposes. This stop is along the way to the Airstream Factory, in Jackson Center Ohio, where we have scheduled some work on AIROSMITH.  We chose the route to explore Kansas, as state we would normally just drive through.  I reached out to a friend, who was born and grew up in the state, for his recommendations.  One was this campground. The lake sits in the middle of a vast agricultural area where we are surrounded by farms and ranches.  The Army Corps suggests a self-guided auto tour , an eighty-mile adventure that circumnavigates the lake.  It takes you to waypoints that form the history of the area.  Driving through the area brought to mind the Song of the Jayhawk  series written by Jack Mars...