Rock City

In the last few years, my husband has become insistent on taking in those random attractions on our road trips that may be near - or not so near - our planned routes. (Don’t get me started on the ‘short cut’ through (somewhat) scenic rural Utah one year that added six hours to our drive!) On our annual road trip to and from South Dakota this year, our attractions included Palo Duro Canyon, TX; Rock City, KS; and Coronado Heights, KS. Fortunately, they were worth the extra time.

Rock City is, well, a bunch of tremendous limestone boulders left behind on the Kansas wheat fields when they failed to erode with the surrounding deposits. (Say the phrase ‘Kansas wheat fields’ and all I can think about is the song Matthew by John Denver, quirkily covered on the album Minneapolis Does Denver…My sister and I are the only people I know who admit to being fans, likely because it is the music of our childhood. Is anyone else a secret Denver fan?)

Now I’m getting distracted. But I was trying to capture the immensity of this boulder in my shot; what I ended up liking instead was the way the clouds in the sky mirrored the deep grooves on the boulder.

Unfortunately, this was the only time when we accidentally deleted some of our pics, but here’s a shot of more of the boulders to give you a bigger idea: