Smithsonian Water/Ways exhibit is now traveling Kansas #thinkwater

None of us can live without water, and a new traveling Smithsonian Institution exhibit examines the role that water plays in our lives. Water/Ways is part of Museum on Main Street, a program that brings big topics to smaller towns all over the United States.

The Smithsonian Institution’s traveling Water/Ways exhibit is as beautiful as it is informative.

Water/Ways is currently traveling through Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee and Virginia. It’s a beautiful hands-on exhibit that looks at all of the ways we need, use, and interact with water. Water decides where we live, what we grow, and even our recreation and spiritual activities. Too much or too little water can be devastating.

Learn things you might not have known about water. Endorheic watersheds are made of water that drains to a basin instead of a river or the ocean.

In Kansas, we’re constantly thinking about water. We get too much rain. We don’t get enough. Our rivers are up. Our water supply is low. Our water mains break. Our reservoirs silt up. Zebra mussels threaten our water towers. We worry we’ll deplete our aquifers.

The rest of the world is having conversations about these things. too.

This display helps you understand how much water it takes to produce everyday things, like apples, blue jeans, and cars.

The Water/Ways exhibit looks at where we find water on earth and how human activity impacts our water resources. Learn how much water it takes to grow an apple, built a car, or produce a pair of blue jeans. Try your hand at developing good water policies that protect our water supply while supporting cities AND agriculture. [Hint: It’s super hard.] Discover the water challenges faced by people, plants, and animals around the globe, and how living things have adapted to them.

Try your hand at creating public policy that will both protect the water supply AND meet water demands.

It’s a small but powerful exhibit.

In addition to the traveling Water/Ways exhibit, the Kansas Humanities Council has also awarded grants to numerous sites around the state to tell their own water story. [Disclaimer: The Old Depot Museum, where I work, received one of these grants!] The local stories are amazing and demonstrate how our own state can have very diverse water experiences.

The Smithsonian exhibit is on display at the Eudora Community Museum through August 6. If you can’t make it to Eudora in time, you can catch the exhibit in other Kansas locations through 2018.

There are also three local stories being told during the summer of 2017:

“At the Mercy of the Kaw: Eudora’s Relationship with Water,” the story of Eudora’s relationship with the Kansas River (Eudora Community Museum, Eudora, Kansas)

“Crossings: Getting Over, Around, and Through Water in Franklin County,” the story of the love/hate relationship between Franklin County and the Marais des Cygnes River (Old Depot Museum, Ottawa, Kansas)

“Dam, That Took a Long Time,” the story of the construction of Wyandotte County Lake and Dam (Mr. and Mrs. F.L. Schlagle Library and Environmental Learning Center, Kansas City, Kansas)

Upcoming local stories look at floods, failed canals, desegregating swimming pools, and artesian wells.

This is a powerful traveling exhibit and worth seeking out before it leaves the state.

Mushroom Rock State Park

During last year’s trip through Northwest and North Central Kansas, we found ourselves detouring off of I-70 west of Salina to find Mushroom Rock State Park, a curious piece of Kansas geology and one of the Kansas Sampler Foundations 8 Wonders of Kansas Geography.

My husband, Jim, stands next to the most famous mushroom rock.

Much of Kansas was once covered in a sea, and that sea once had a sandy beach. When that sand was glued together with calcium carbonate, it created a hard formation called a concretion. The loose sand around concretions eventually erode away, but the hard lumps of glued-together sand remain, leaving behind unusual natural sculptures distinguished enough to make visitors stop and puzzle over them–large rock formations sprouting out of the Kansas prairie like, well, mushrooms.

Hence, Mushroom Rock State Park in the Smoky Hills of Kansas.

The concretions at this park have been getting visitors for a long time. The sands within them, which are part of the Dakota Formation, are left over from the beaches of the Cretaceous Period, which was 144 to 66 million years ago. Indians, explorers, trail riders, emigrant settlers–many people have stopped by to pay their respects to the mushroom rocks. Ellsworth County Historical Society recognized their importance and built a road to see them, and in 1965, Mushroom Rock became a state park.

The formations’ ability to fascinate visitors for centuries is documented by historic vandalism.

This free park is small–only 5 acres–and the concretions are accessible on foot, though the footpaths are narrow in places and were extremely muddy and slippery the day we visited. The formations are fascinating and beautiful, and I’m particularly drawn to the idea of connecting with centuries of visitors who stood in the same spots, staring at the same rock formations. It’s a quick, kid-friendly stop, too.

Pulpit Rock formation, which, incidentally, is on the opposite end of the park from Devil’s Oven formation.

The state website includes a downloadable guide, and because we found cellphone service to be spotty in the area, it is helpful to download it ahead of time. Although they’ll be fun to visit at any time, the park was especially beautiful in late May, when wildflowers are blooming all around the park.