Cedar Bluff State Park, Kansas

We made the move from Sand Hills SP to Cedar Bluff SP on August 2. We were looking for a place that we would want to stay for 5 nights. Cedar Bluff SP looked like a nice park on a good sized lake.

We made the 160 mile drive out through central Kansas. Did you know that one Kansas has one of the largest marshes in the US? I did not either. We drove right past it and would love to come back during the annual bird migration and check out the many different species of birds that make a stop there on their annual trip.

While we were driving along highway 4, we went through a wind farm. We saw something I had not seen before. Here is a failure of one of the blades. It looks like some heavy wind caused it to de-laminate and fail.

We are also migrating to find more favorable weather. We needed to find a place to stay because we were unable to find a spot in the Denver area over the weekend of August 6/7. The longer stay was fine with us, we were ready for some down time. Kim did a bunch of reading and I spent some time biking and hiking and then napping.

This is a very active park and is very large. It seems that many of the people in this part of Kansas come to the lake to stay cool this time of year. The wheat harvest has just finished and now it is time to head to the lake to cool down and relax.

Here is a shot of our site. It is a pretty standard Full Hook up site with 50 amp electric. The total cost after paying for an annual vehicle pass is $25 per night. The spacing between sites is good and the park is well run.

The interesting thing about this lake is that it is significantly more full than it has been in recent drought years, but it is still down about 30 feet. It must have been sad to see it when it was at it's lowest. The area behind the trailer in the pic above at one time was full of water. Here is a shot of a boat ramp that is no longer usable.

The SP has adapted to the new water level and built new boat launches and swim beaches. I would love to come back here when the lake fills up. It would take some very significant rain in just the right spot to make that happen.

I did some reading about the local history and found a historic site very close to the park. It is the "Threshing Machine Massacre site". There was a threshing machine that was being shipped to Brigham Young in Salt Lake City. It stopped at a Butterfield stage stop in a canyon just north of what is now the SP. They were wiped our by a band of Indians and the machine was burned. It sat there for years and is now in a museum in Wakenney, Kansas. Kim and I decided to walk to the site. We walked for about 5 miles, but did not find the site. Oh well, it was still a good workout. We got in the truck and drove around and think we found the site, but there was still not signage. Here is the only shot I got. There is supposed to be some old writing on the rocks, but we could not find a way in there. It was too overgrown.

We then headed across the lake to see the Cedar Bluff overlook. That did not disappoint. We were there by ourselves and the views were pretty cool.

We have to prove we were there, so here are a couple of shots of Kim and  playing on the rocks about 100 feet above the water.

Last night we had a pretty good storm come through. The good news is that it has dropped the temps and the high today is only about 75 degrees. I have to tell you it feels great. I got this one shot of the storms building last evening:

Well that is about it from here. We will go to Ellis tomorrow to check out the little town and go to church. We will go out to dinner for my birthday. I will be 57 tomorrow. Then we will travel on Sunday about 200 miles west to a small town that has an RV park that accepts Passport America. We will just stay one night and then on into Lakewood, Colorado on Monday to see my folks and my brother and his family. I am really looking forward to that.