Day 3 - Wednesday, 7/26/2023: Manhattan to Manitou Springs, CO

I knew when I pulled out of the hotel parking lot (just across the street from Kansas State) that I had to be in Colorado Springs by day’s end, so I had a few decisions to make on how to spend my time. First decision: take a detour south of 70 and head to the Kiowa Formation at Kanopolis Lake. I arrived at my first stop around 9:30. The lake level had dropped several feet from when my internet source had been there, and the beach trail he referred to more or less didn’t exist anymore. Instead, there was a wide “beachy” area of sand and rock and four-foot-tall weeds that trailed off into a swamp about 100 feet from what had been the shoreline. I am well aware that there are snakes in Kansas (four native poisonous species, to be precise), and as I contemplated the weedy mess before me, I almost chickened out. But the day before had been so damn disappointing, I grabbed my walking stick and started off, beating the weeds in front of me and chanting “Snakey, no snakey, no snakey” with every step, though whether to scare the snakes off or try to cast some sort of magic snake-repellant spell I’m not sure.

I’m probably overselling the weeds here. The density wasn’t grasslike; instead, each plant was several inches from the next stalk, and I could clearly see the ground between. I’d gone a quarter of a mile or so before reaching what I suspected was the end of the trail my source had described. Looking around, I figured day 3 was off to another non-rocky start, but then I looked a little more closely and found what I was looking for: barite roses. The ground was a-bloom with them, and I collected probably a few too many to make up for the scarcity of the previous day. I wandered around and collected roses and photos for about 30 minutes before I returned to the truck having neither seen nor been bitten by a snake. There were probably no snakes around in the first place, but I’m gonna hang onto that chant for the future . . . just in case!

Next, I drove to another part of the lake in search of cone-in-cone structures (this link does a great job of explaining what they are). I was not disappointed. I found numerous examples of these, along with Turritella (some exhibiting the same sort of fibrous structure that is seen in the cone-in-cone specimens), selenite (including a cool fishtail selenite cluster) and galena and/or white pyrite. I could have collected all day, but I had left my hat in the car and was dripping sweat in the hundred-degree heat--plus, I still had at least six hours to Colorado Springs . . . and potentially three more stops for the day. So after 30-45 minutes of collecting, I reluctantly tore myself away and pointed Barry to the northwest.

As I neared Hays, I made decision number two to pull off and visit the Sternberg Museum of Natural History. Affiliated with Ft. Hays State University, the museum is well-known in paleontological circles for its collection of Cretaceous and Permian flora and fauna, including numerous specimens from throughout Kansas. Before I set off on this expedition, I had begun reading Michael J. Everhart's Oceans of Kansas, which whetted my appetite for a stop. Everhart, a long-time curator at the facility and the discoverer of many of the specimens in its collection, maintains the Oceans of Kansas web site, which is chocked full of information about Kansas when it lay beneath the Western Interior Sea. The photos from his book sprang to life in the halls of the Sternberg: plesiosaurs, sharks, mosasaurs and the famous fish-within-a-fish fossil were all on display. I spent about an hour browsing the exhibits, taking a few hundred photos and enjoying the cool before heading out to the parking lot.

Would this be the last stop before Colorado Springs, or did I have time to hit one or two more places? With the AC cranked to max, I sat in the parking lot and ran some routes through Waze. Going to even one of the two spots I had in mind would require a detour of an hour and forty-five minutes, putting me at my hotel around 8:30. Considering that I would be driving unfamiliar roads and that it was, no joke, 106 degrees, I made decision number three and opted to let discretion be the better part of valor with a goal of making it to the hotel by 7. Maybe I could catch one or both places on the way home.

As I rolled west on I-70 and crossed into Colorado, the sky before me darkened with a line of late-afternoon storms rolling eastward off the Rockies. I left the interstate at Limon to pick up US Hwy 24, mildly irritated that 80 m.p.h. was down to 50 m.p.h. thanks to the two-lane road and the poky driver in front of me, but ultimately glad for the lower speed: it gave me more time to enjoy the view. I pulled off in several spots to take photos: the play of light through the clouds, a windmill, an empty gravel road threaded into infinity among green fields. The rain hit in earnest about the time I crossed into the Colorado Springs city limits, and I was grateful to find a small garage beneath the hotel so I could uncurl from the diver's seat and grab my bags without getting soaked. A shower later, the shower outside had ended, and I walked down the street to Adam's Mountain Cafe for a glass of Pinot Grigio and a bowl of mac and cheese. I watched the half moon move slowly across the skylight as I cleaned my plate then walked the two blocks back to the room I would call home for the next four nights.