Cottonwood Falls to Hesston, KS

Today I stopped at a national tallgrass prarie preserve and looked around. I felt a little cheated because the grass was only about a foot high. Hardly "tall". I learned later that is normal for this time of year - the really tall grass doesn't grow up until later in the season. OK.

They also had displays of a bunch of old stuff... horse-drawn buggies, foot-powered grinding wheels, etc. Made me wonder how we would make those things differently if we had to make them today. I was imagining for example the buggy... instead of being made of lumber and forged iron, it could be built like a bicycle. It would have a lightweight chrome-moly steel frame, bicycle-style tension-spoked wheels, air-filled rubber tires, mesh-backed seats, a waterproof ripstop nylon canopy, sealed ball bearings, etc. I was thinking about a post-carbon world, of course. Before gasoline was used for everything, people used horses or their own muscles. But what if we went back to human or animal power but with modern manufacturing techniques? Seems like we could use some of the basic designs they used but make them much lighter, more comfortable, and more convenient. I can imagine a collapsible horse-drawn buggy, for example, that folds up when not in use. Hmm...

Saw this cool sign today. If that doesn't say "Dave, come visit us!" I don't know what would. Too bad it was 4.5 miles out of my way down a gravel road, or I surely would have visited them.

Finally arrived in Hesston, where my parents went to college.