Day 26: Lawrence KS to Syracuse KS

 Late start

We ended up staying up quite late chatting my childhood friend and his newfound better half.   There is so much to reflect on and it happened all so fast and much of what was discussed did not feel like appropriate content for this blog.   To say I love my friends and fam more than I express here.

We woke up perhaps too soon to a heavy rain.  One thing of note is how in our travels we have moved back and forth between water abundance and drought often over short distances in areas that are nearly identical in a climactic sense.  I wonder if the butterfly that flapped its wings is aware of what chaos spread from its dance.  Still it is beautiful to witness. 

Our friends had stayed up later than us and slept in later too.  Honestly I have always been the earliest riser / to bed of my circles of friends.   At one time I used to fight this - a sort of fear of missing out.  In older age I have embraced more of a self-care regime and trusted those I love to do as well.  That said we were ravenously hungry and in need of caffeine.   Our first attempt to find a dount shop encountered a building clearly in "transition of ownership."  Our second found us trapped by a 12 car line at drive through only location of Dunkin'.  Finally we located a funky independant bakery a few blocks away that had all we needed.  It's interesting to see how different places have responded to COVID or not done so.  Lawrence looked like California did a few months ago, perhaps even stricter.  From what I understand the rest of the state is lot more lax, thus the need for stricter enforcement by local business in Lawrence.  

We finally got our hotel for the evening booked and then left around 11 AM.  All this time is too short.

Flint Hills

Kansas like a lot of great plains states is comprised primarily of sedimentary rocks that get younger as you head west.   Also like a lot of Great Plains states, it gets drier as you head west and further from the moisture sources of the Gulf.  Much of the state is along "the imperceptible slope" where average elevation climbs 2500 feet over 400 miles.  Depending on how close you are to a major river system this can be anything from a long flat drive to a series of rolling hills where the average climb is slightly more than the average descent.  

About 1/3 of the way across the state one enters the Flint hills, the top of a broad anticline in the otherwise nearly horizontal sedimentary rocks.  It exposes a rock that weathers into a fine soil for tall grasses.  The elevation and views afforded here make this a popular weekend outing destination in the region.  We stopped only to use the restroom and take some pics, but knew more was our there as always.

Mushroom rocks

Near Salina we left the freeways and set out on back roads that would be much of our remaining journey.   Our only real stop today was a location 30 minutes WSW of Salina known as Mushroom Rocks State park.  This small little patch of land, measuring less than 1/4 mile across and less than 1/2 mile from North to South preserves a number of spectacular concretions that sometimes form as part of the sandstone diagenetic process.  What we see in these pictures is a sandstone with crossbedding indicating a persistent current at time of deposition.   At some later time when the sandstone was well buried. The water in the pores between the grains became supersaturated with calcite.  This calcite grew steadily in a spherical shape from the original seed crystal, cementing the sand grains to one another.  When subsequent uplift and erosion brought this sandstone back to the surface the areas cemented by calcite were more resistant to the elements and so emerged these Mushrooms.  While concretions are fairly common in sandstones, these are quite a bit more voluminous than those typically found.  

Arkansas valley

We continued west.  The trees grew smaller and fewer,  the towns had more miles in between.  The land became more and more flat.  So we were heading into the drier high plains.  It was only the excellent quality beef jerkey that kept us awake and aware on the miles of straight roads we covered, along with the gatehring storms.  We only hit one real episode of rain, but it was enough to keep things interesting. While much of the drive was in the Arkansas river valley, we barely noticed as the sides of the valley rise almost as imperceptibly as the greater plains themselves.  

Rolled into Syracuse ~ 6 PM MDT, and quickly set to ordering a pizza.  As it turned out the pizza place was a 1/4 walk down neighborhood streets, so I decided to give my legs a stretch.  There is a charm to these towns.  I was impressed with the use of local geology in landscaping, and the number of folks with ATV's.  As this is a gathering place for offroading in Kansas I shouldn't have been too surprised, but it was fun nonetheless.  All around us cumulonimbus grew taller and taller