Mushroom rock formations are created when a harder rock finds itself, over the slow process of geologic time, on top of a softer rock. Heading from McPherson, I drove on Kansas' newest scenic byway, Pioneer Trails. It's no new, no signs are up marking the route. Other than the the Mushroom Rock photograph, all of the other pictures were taken on the new byway.
Yes, I had to get one more barbed wire photograph in. Many of the fences in this part of Kansas have posts made up of ordinary tree branches. Just as I found nascent ghost town on the Smoky Valley Scenic Byway, the byway town Roxbury seems to be heading that way as well. The building in the bottom photograph comes from there.
For more on Pioneer Trails, visit Kalle Lilla's Lindsborger News blog, here and here.
Mushroom Rock and the other rock formations in the five acre state park are a big deal to Kansans. Although I described Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
as a "teeth-gnashing" experience, I enjoyed the book's chapter on Pope Michael I, also known as David Bawden. One two photographs on the Bawden's main page is of the Pope posed in front of Mushroom Rock.Bawden lives near Topeka, and considers the Vatican popes from John XXXII onwards as heretics.
Mushoom Rock State Park is located near Salina, just south of Interstate 70. Like the impressive Monument Rocks, drivers have to endure a few miles on unpaved roads to get there.
This is my last Kansas byways post, and I only have few Kansas Kronikles eentries left Now is a good time bring up Marci Penner's Kansas Guidebook For Explorers. A reader e-mailed me about the book, I wasn't aware of it before I left. If you want to learn as much as possible about traveling through the Sunflower State, click here.
Next: Abilene
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