Tallgrass Prairie Preserve

 This is a joint project of the Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service.  They have preserved as best they could a big chunk of what the prariers were like when the Europeans arrived.  In wet years, the grass could be eight feet high in summer.  This was not one of those years and we were there in  fall.  They have a bison herd.  To prevent Darwinizing:

Was there ever a cute, sweet bison cartoon character?  How do people get so stupid?

I knew that the Great Plains were not so flat you could watch your dog run away until he became a dot on the horizon, but the amount of rolling hills and tree-lined watercourses was still starling.

The rancher who got rich raising cattle and swine built an impressive house described a mix of Renaisance and Prairie Plain (a Frank Lloyd Wright variant of Arts & Crafts):  

It was a self-sufficient ranch with ice house and meat curing buildings:

Near the house was Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie.  I was waiting for Laura Ignalls Wilder to show up.

Are you enough to remember blackboards?  I am.

Cursive was slightly different.  Reading 19th century manuscript is often difficult.

I was reluctant to open the science book for what it might show compared to today.

A variety of berries grew out there such as Rocky Mountain Sumac: