sunflowers #2 (2011)

I’ve always dug sunflower season: a last brilliant gasp of summer before autumn. Every sunflower season for the last 3 or 4 years we’ve made a point to find a first rate sunflower field for photo ops with the family. Marshall county has had some of the best in the past, but the farmers I know have moved away from the crop – and they never got into it for the aesthetics anyway. And it’s a 2 + hour drive.

Right now is the best time to find pictures. They'll be haggard in a week.

There’s a farmer near Lawrence who we’ve discovered – who plants a field most years – and leaves a Karma bucket up so you can cut flowers (1$ apiece I hear) if you want. I’ll search and post again once I find more pictures from years past. His wife (I assume) blogs at The Farmers Wife blog.


Map with directions found below.




Double click on map to enlarge. Field is 7 miles from the turnpike ramp in north Lawrence.

Echo Cliff

Discovered a hidden gem of Kansas geology this weekend at Echo Cliff near Dover just outside of Topeka. It started at the sunflower field near Lawrence - where the boy discovered some Sioux Quartzite and got really interested in my stories of glaciers and how the rocks ended up in Kansas so far from their home in Minnesota.

That lead us to the Kansas Geological Survey site, which noted an anomalous sandstone deposit less than an hour from our home. The sites we found had less than impressive photos, but they hinted at something interesting - and that called for a road trip.

There is an echo - and some bizarre steam punk out houses, picnic tables

and wild folk art trash cans. But the landscape looks alien to Kansas.