I Took a Dirt Road Detour Off I-70 in Kansas to Check Out Some Rock Formations and It Was Very Worth It

Last summer, I drove from Colorado all the way to the east coast to see my favorite band in a bunch of venues.

After a festival in Delaware, there was a two-week break before the band was scheduled to play a few Labor Day weekend shows back in Colorado. This meant I had to drive my car from Delaware all the way back to Colorado for those concerts (and return home).

I don’t mind long drives; I actually love them. However, after being on the road for a month, I wasn’t exactly excited about this 26-hour drive. Fortunately, one of my best friends and favorite people volunteered to do the drive with me, so I didn’t have to go alone. Her company definitely made the trip much more pleasant and quite fun.

I hate to say it, but the drive from Delaware to Colorado, in general, isn’t all that interesting. You just get on I-70 and go west – for 26 hours. You cross Maryland, a little of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, and then the last three hours traverse the Colorado plains. No offense intended to anyone who lives in any of these states, but on a whole, it's a pretty unremarkable drive.

To entertain ourselves, we started looking for interesting places to stop and roadside attractions about halfway through the trip. In Illinois, we stopped in Casey, a town that claims the Guinness Book of World Record for a variety of the world’s largest items, such as the world’s largest mailbox, the world’s largest rocking chair, the world’s largest pitchfork, and other world's largest things.

In Missouri, we stopped and stayed overnight at the Isle of Capri Casino in Boonville. Neither of us are big gamblers, but I’m always curious to check out a casino that’s seemingly in the middle of nowhere just for the novelty of it. Turns out, the town of Boonville was quite adorable, and we enjoyed an excellent lunch at The Palace Restaurant before we continued on our way.

At the beginning of Kansas, we made a short detour to check out Truckhenge just outside of Topeka. This unusual collection of art made out of scrap metal, old vehicles, and other items was quiet and eerie -- the perfect place for a photoshoot! We also stopped in Wamego, Kansas, a small town known for its Wizard of Oz Museum – aptly named OZ Museum – but it was about to close for the day, so we missed out. Still, we enjoyed admiring the various Oz callouts around town and located several of Wamego’s 18 statues of Toto.

We continued across Kansas and stayed in a hotel one final night – this time in Hays. Hays is only five hours from Denver so I considered pushing on through and just getting home, but by this point in the drive I was really starting to run out of steam.

Plus, there were two more things on our route that I really wanted to check out. And this time, they weren’t exactly right on our direct route. In fact, they were quite a bit out of the way. We were pretty close to Colorado by this point in our adventure, so the sensible thing would have been heading straight home.

Now, I consider myself pretty sensible, in most things. But when it comes to adventure, I can often convince myself to do something rather illogical in order to see or experience something new. That meant it was time for a detour.

I had seen pictures of interesting rock formations in Kansas before, and I couldn't believe my eyes at the time. I made a mental note of where these formations were: on the western side of the state, it turned out, awfully far from Denver.

I figured I'd make it there one of these days, and "one of these days" had come.

We got off I-70 in the small town of Collyer and headed south. The first of the two sites I wanted to see was about a half an hour off the highway, and I knew that before we exited. What I didn't realize, though, was that the paved road would immediately become a dirt road, and that it would be a dirt road the entire way. I didn't mind; I knew my car could easily handle it - and it was well graded, too - it just showed me how much of a rural detour this was about to be.

We barreled along past farmhouses, fields, and occasional cottonwood trees. I don't think we saw another human or moving vehicle for all of the 17-mile journey. The road was a little muddy in places, but I never worried about getting stuck. The sun was shining and the air was fresh, and I was excited to reach our first destination: Castle Rock Badlands.

When we finally arrived, I found Castle Rock Badlands to be even more interesting and impressive than I anticipated. It's on private property, but the public is welcome to visit, as long as they are respectful of the land.

The main attraction at this site is Castle Rock itself, but there's a lot more to explore. Castle Rock is an interesting formation made of limestone, chalk, and shale that is millions of years old, and it stands tall in contrast to the flat prairie that surrounds it. Apparently, the spire that was the tallest of the four that stand together fell in 2001 in a thunderstorm, but the remaining three are still quite staggering and tower several stories above where you park and stand.

A few hundred yards away are the Castle Rock Badlands and it was to this area that I was especially drawn. Similar to areas like Badlands National Park and Theodore Roosevelt National Park - both of which I adore - a variety of structures rise from the surrounding surface and create a natural maze that's enticing to explore. There was only one other car at the site and we never saw the people from it; they were likely deeply entrenched in the maze themselves. Although the badlands cover an area that is likely smaller than a quarter mile square, there were lots of places to climb and poke around and I took lots of photos. Wildflowers peeked out from cracks and a cool breeze refreshed us on an otherwise hot day. The setting was silent, serene, unusual, and striking.

After we finished up at Castle Rock Badlands, it was time to move on to our next destination. Rather than head back to the highway, we decided to continue on dirt roads for another 46 miles due east to Monument Rocks. The terrain en route continued to consist of occasional mud, prairie grasses, farms, and no visible people at all.

Monument Rocks National Landmark was a site that was also unique and beautiful. It was Kansas's first national landmark and like Castle Rocks Badlands, it's counted among the Eight Wonders of Kansas. This spot is also on private land where the public is welcome, but it, too, was deserted when we arrived. There were, however, a bunch of cows wandering among the rock formations, but there were no humans in sight.

These rock formations were quite different from those an hour east. Walls of rock stand tall here and there are quite a few of them to wander among. There are no badlands - just towering structures that reach 60 to 70 feet high in many places. The fact that wind erosion, put forth by strong prairie winds, carved them over millions of years, means there are interesting shapes to be seen here. In some places, natural arches have formed which offer opportunities for great photos. Like Castle Rocks, these formations were created when Kansas was entirely under water, somewhere in the ballpark of 80 million years ago.

I was blown away by both of these natural sites. I never would have guessed that formations like these would exist in a state that is known for being mostly flat and mostly full of cows and corn. Even the pictures I had seen prior to my visit did not at all do them justice; Castle Rock Badlands and Monument Rocks are both places that must be seen with one's own eyes to fully enjoy and appreciate.

As my friend and I got back in my car to head back to I-70 to complete our journey to Denver, we high fived and congratulated ourselves for making the effort to go way out to see these beautiful places, especially at the end of a very long drive when we were so close to our final destination. It would have been easier to just drive straight to Denver, sure. But then we would have missed out on this amazing experience. This detour was absolutely worth it in every way.

It sometimes may seem like a bit of a hassle to stray off the beaten path, but doing so can be so rewarding. It almost always pays to explore a little more deeply than you normally would when you're traveling. I highly recommend that you, too, make an effort to find things like Castle Rock Badlands or Monument Rocks on your own trips and visit them. It may sound cliche, because it is, but it's not just the destination, but the journey that matters. Take time to stop and smell the proverbial flowers, and you'll be richer for it - for sure.