Wildflower Tour in Barber County, KS

Hello! On Mother's Day weekend I participated in an annual wildflower walk in Barber County. The area is close to Oklahoma and is half way between Wichita and Dodge City and about a 2.5 hour drive from Garden City. The Barber County wildflower tour has been taking place for over 20 years, so they are an organized bunch! There were about 75 participants who were mostly locals plus a few of us from across the state.

I stayed overnight in Medicine Lodge and then Saturday morning we were treated to a slideshow of the wildflowers we were going out to see. My pictures never seem to turn out that nice... The area is a "mixed-grass prairie" so there are tall grasses like Indian grass, big bluestem, and switchgrass and also short grasses like buffalo grass. The Medicine Lodge area is beautiful because of the rolling gypsum hills, also called the red hills. Here is a website I found with a nice write-up on the gyp hills: www.naturalkansas.org/gypsum1.htm

The two half-acre sites we visited had small flags put in the ground to mark specific plants and the tour guides read a short blurb about each plant. Just FYI, a "meadow muffin" a.k.a. "cow pie" has nothing to do with baking. I was already familiar with several plants such as: buffalo grass, prairie groundsel, yellow wood sorrel, wavyleaf thistle, yucca, scarlet gaura, scarlet globemallow, Missouri milkvetch, common/Ohio spiderwort, white milkwort, prickly pear cactus, wild onion and purple poppy mallow. Species new to me were: prairie (native) dandelion, blue wild indigo, lemon paintbrush, rose verbena, and catsclaw sensitive briar. What a cool variety of plants!

Work Trip to Westcliffe, CO

Hello again! My travels took me to the mountainous region of Westcliffe, CO this past week and it was such a beautiful area! Westcliffe is about an hour west of Pueblo, which is south of Colorado Springs and Denver. I was attending the Arkansas River Basin Forum, where I listened to presenters talk about river issues near the headwater region of the Arkansas River. I went on a field trip tour of the valley just below the mountains where local ranchers are working to protect the natural area from housing development.

Unfortunately, I dealt with altitude sickness for over half of the trip. Aside from being sick, I had a great time in the mountains and enjoyed the fresh air and open spaces.

On the way to Westcliffe, our group stopped at a really cool place that everyone should see sometime. It's called Bishop Castle (see the picture I took at the top of this post). Tourists can climb all over the castle and sometimes it feels like you are walking on air! Below is a story I found online about the castle and its eccentric creator...

For 40 years, Jim Bishop has been building a castle on a mountainside in central Colorado. "Did it all myself, don't want any help," he says mechanically as he unloads a pile of rocks that he's hoisted to the 70-foot level on one of the castle towers.

Every year since 1969, Bishop has single-handedly gathered and set over 1000 tons of rock to create this stone and iron fortress in the middle of nowhere. Bishop calls it "a monument to hardworking people" and "America's biggest, one-man, physical project." "I always wanted a castle. Every man wants a castle," Bishop continues, his voice a broken record, answering the same questions he's obviously been asked thousands of times before.

Bishop's goal is to complete his castle before he dies. He has no thought of slowing down. Although the castle is still just a hollow shell of cemented rocks and ornamental ironwork (Jim Bishop's regular line of business), his future plans include a moat and a drawbridge, a roller coaster mounted on the castle's outer wall, a balcony big enough to hold an orchestra, and a second castle for his wife.

Address: 12705 CO-165, Rye - Beulah, CO
Directions: I-25, turn west at highway 165 going through Rye or Colorado City approximately 27 miles to Bishop Castle.