Spring 2022 trip - Day 8, Saturday April 30th - Manhattan (KS) to Tulsa (OK) - 1 hike, 2.2 miles

Our trip to Tulsa was kind of funny.  In theory and plan we should have been able to head out the driveway from the hotel in Manhattan, turn right, go about 2/3rd of a mile, turn left on KS-177 South and follow that all the way into Oklahoma where it would become OK-177 and get relatively close to Tulsa.  That is far from how it worked out.  

Kansas is making KS-177 4 lanes for much of the Manhattan to Council Grove and there seem to be at least two places where the route is simply closed.  The posted detour took us onto I-70 west for quite a long westward leg.  I spotted a small road off an exit that would (and did) eventually lead to KS-177, considerably farther south than our initial detour so we tried that instead of following the entire official detour.  Yet when we got back to KS-177 it was still marked as closed heading south so there was either another closure farther south or the one closure was this far south.  We soon discovered that working around these closures was very tough which helped explain the long posted detour on I-70.  It took us many miles of gravel roads to get around it and by that point it wasn't worth going back to KS-177 at all especially since there were very few dining opportunities along that road.  KS-177 is the Flint Hills Scenic Byway but we got a good idea of the Flint Hills from our hike at the Konza Prairie etc.


 

We had lunch in Emporia KS and then went on a hike at Badger Creek State Park near Fall River Kansas.  The first attempt at getting to that involved many miles of gravel road and a few low water crossings (basically culverts that are easily overwhelmed with water and then become spillways).  The nasty storm the night before had moved some rocks and muck around so one of the crossings required me to move a rock out of the way and then another, on an even sketchier gravel road, we deemed to be impassable in our low slung rental Nissan Maxima.  So we backtracked and took another road until Google Maps got us rerouted around the crossing we didn't want to use.  The hike had a lot of large rocks and an overall rocky and terraced landscaped with some nice little creeks here and there. Overall I could tell as soon as I saw the photos on Alltrails that this wasn't a typical Kansas walk.  We did a loop around the trail system but the entire trail doubles back almost on itself several times and we opted instead to just make a loop around the outer edge.  There were a lot of muddy spots but they weren't as bothersome as the trails in Illinois above the river which were nearly impassable.





The rest of the drive into Tulsa was very easy.  The Hyatt Regency downtown is lovely and has a lot of nice facilities.  We ate at the recommended 'The Brook Restaurant and Bar' and while it was busy and took a while, it was a good experience. They have a really smart idea with relatively simple approachable food served in a really cool minimalist modern building downtown.  And the value factor was amazing.  We both had custom made mac and cheese bowls, a cocktail, a side salad and we shared a really good apple crisp and the total including tax was under 50 dollars.  It made me realize how expensive living in NY really is. We can't even get out of Red Robin sharing an entree, an app and desert  for 50 dollars at home.

There were a lot of prom events and parties last night so downtown was very loud with revving motors and some loud people late into the night.  Hopefully Sunday night is better.

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