This felt like quite possibly the longest travel day of all time. Holy smokes it seemed like the day would never end! It was the longest single day of driving we have ever done and I don’t think we can ever do that again. It was way too hard on everyone. The kids were absolute champions though.
Mark and I got up at 2:00 AM and we were on the road by 3:00 AM. The morning actually went pretty quickly. We had the added bonus of formally getting the job offer for Ohio at 6:00 AM that morning. That definitely gave us something to talk about.
Tallgrass Prairie
We usually try and have a stop on our travel days to break up the day a little. We decided to stop at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Strong City, Kansas. This was eight hours into our day, and we were all feeling really great.
The tallgrass prairie ecosystem once covered 170 million acres of North America, but within a generation most of it had been transformed to either farms, cities, or towns. Today less than 4% remains, and it is mostly in the Kansas Flint Hills.
“Whenever you stop on the prairie to lunch or camp, and gaze around, there is a picture such as poet and 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.”
D.W. Wilder, 1884
Spring Hill Farm and Stock Ranch Barn
We had so much fun exploring the farm and barn. This was quite the ranching operation from 1878 to 1986. This limestone barn is MASSIVE. It was built in 1882 and was the working center of the ranch. It housed livestock, equipment, and enough hay and grain to feed the animals in winter.
Spring Hill Ranch House
There are many outbuildings around the property, but we especially loved the ranch house. It was built in 1881 and is a limestone mansion. It was built into the hill for natural insulation and used spring water that was piped into the home with an intricate underground system. It had so many wonderful details.
Scenic Overlook Trail
Mark and the “bigs” went down the trail while I fed Lydie her lunch in the barn. I’ve fed Lydie in a lot of places, but that might have been a first. It was cool and lovely. We watched the horse while we waited for the rest to get back. The others on the trail got to see buffalo (Mark’s favorite animal) and so they thought it was a grand success! We spent a little longer than we thought but we had a great time!
Emporia
The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is very close to Emporia, and so we decided we would drive through town. This is the town where my Great Grandma Moldenhauer was born. They eventually moved to Idaho, but it was fun to catch a glimpse of the town. I wasn’t able to find the street where she lived, but I did find the Methodist Church that she most likely would have attended.
On the Road
The last third of the trip felt like it would never end! We only had four and a half hours left but it felt like an eternity. I try really hard to plan our trips so that we are settled in our hotel by dinnertime – I just find that works best for us. This didn’t happen MANY nights of this trip though. I will definitely have to plan things a little differently next time.
We finally drove into Bentonville at 7:30 PM. The temple is such a showstopper. It is right off the freeway and was just glowing and beautiful. We wanted to stop and grab a quick fast-food dinner and ended up wandering through the giant Walmart Headquarters (the fast food listed on my food was in their indoor food court).
We were starting to get desperate, so we stopped at Taco Bell. The line wasn’t moving at all and so I ran inside thinking it might be faster. Oh, how wrong I was! Of course, there is no employees in sight anymore (everything is all done on kiosks) and I waited over 30 MINUTES for our food. It was insane. It did make a good joke the whole rest of the trip though – we never waited 30 minutes for any of our other food that was actually good, quality food!
The kids were such troopers – they handled the day much better than I did by the end! We were very glad to have the day behind us! But we make it to Arkansas!
