Parts of Kansas

I thought I would take a few seconds to give you a geographic tour of Kansas. If you are ever driving through Kansas instead of just flying over, your trip will be more enjoyable if you know a little about it. To most people it looks the same as you go through the state but there are definitely distinct areas of the state. If you travel west on I-70 from Kansas City, the first area you will go through is the Flint Hills.



In the picture you can see what looks like a bunch of rocks sitting on top of hills. Those rocks are actually flint, hence the Flint Hills. Underneath the surface soil there are layers of rocks. Flint is very hard and a lot of time the other layers around flint are either chalk or limestone. What happens is over time the weather causes erosion and the other rocks erode away, leaving flint sitting on the surface.

The next area you will go through will be the Smokey Hills. It doesn't turn out very well in this photo, but even on bright sunny days, there is a haze over the hills.



The next area you go through will be Post Rock Country.



Back in Olden Times, they hadn't discovered trees yet in Kansas. By that time though, they had discovered cows. There were some problems though. Without fences, the cows would walk pretty much anywhere they wanted. Cows would be walking through your house if you let them. Also at that time, the China shop was invented and a bull got loose and tore the place up. A cowboy decided that the cows should be kept in one place so that they wouldn't poop in the house and tear up China shops. He decided to build a fence but there were no trees to get wood. He invented barbed wire but still, there weren't any trees to make posts to hang the barbed wire. So instead he went to a rock outcropping and made some posts out of rock. If you go through this area of the country you can still see those original fences made out of barbed wire and rock.

Also around this area, the cowboy did a lot of hunting. One day he was out hunting for food and shot at a rabbit. He missed but up from the ground came bubbling crude.



I didn't realize that they got oil out of Kansas but there are tons of oil wells.

As you move further west you will see the land start looking more Southwestern. There are a lot of sage brushes, tumbleweeds and yucca plants.