6 Weeks In Kansas: This Is What We Have Planned

Having spent 3 weeks in Denver over Christmas and New Year, we moved on to Kansas – our 11th official state on our 5 year, 50 state road trip.

We’re spending 6 weeks in the Sunflower State and will be staying in 8 different cities. Kansas isn’t somewhere many people would choose to visit for so long, but we’re hoping it’ll be more fun than most people would expect.

Here’s what we have planned for our 1.5 months in Kansas.

1) Ness City

Seeing as we were driving in from Colorado, we decided to start on the west side of Kansas. There were a few things we wanted to see in this part of the state – Monument Rocks (pictured above), Castle Rock, etc., so booked a four night stay in Ness City as we found a great Airbnb.

We left Ness City a couple of nights ago, so we’ll have more about what we got up to there in the coming days.

2) Dighton

Our original plan had been to stay in Ness City for 5 nights, but the 5th night wasn’t available at the Airbnb property. While searching for properties, we came across a historic hotel in Dighton. This wasn’t too far from Ness City, so we booked a night there.

3) Garden City

We arrived in Garden City last night and will be here for 5 nights. It’s a city in southwest Kansas and is fairly close to Dodge City. Given that most people want to “Get out of Dodge”, it’ll be interesting to see what the area has to offer.

That is, if the weather doesn’t thwart our plans. We got about 6-8″ of snow tonight, so we’ll likely be limited as to how much outdoor stuff we can do. There’s Sandsage Bison Range nearby where we were hoping to go and see some bison, Boot Hill Museum in Dodge City and possibly Big Well Museum in Greensburg. We need to look into the latter option a little more – I came across a Groupon for it recently, but have no idea how interesting it’d be.

4) Wichita

Our original plan was to book an Airbnb in downtown Wichita for about 10 days. Seeing as we went over budget in November and December though, we booked a hotel using points to save money.

There are quite a few things we have listed to possibly see in and around Wichita:

• Tanganyika Wildlife Park
• Old Cowtown Museum
• Keeper Of The Plains (a 44 ft tall sculpture of a Native American)
• The Original Pizza Hut Museum (!)
• Museum of World Treasures
• Cowley State Fishing Lake (apparently it has a beautiful waterfall)
• Helium Memorial Park

5) Parsons

There are a few things we want to see in southeast Kansas, but there weren’t many pet-friendly hotel and Airbnb options there.

We eventually found a decently priced hotel, so we’ll be staying there a few nights. In that area there’s a Little House On The Prairie Museum, the world’s largest electric shovel (yep, only the best for us 😉 ) and Cars on the Route. Cars on the Route is a service station with a boom truck outside that inspired the character Tow Mater in the movie Cars.

6) Kansas City

Kansas City is found in two states – Kansas and Missouri. Downtown Kansas City and a lot of what the city has to offer is on the Missouri side, but we’ve booked 6 nights on the Kansas side.

We don’t have much listed for the city itself other than eating Kansas City BBQ, but Massachusetts Street and Lawrence Public Library (both in nearby Lawrence) are apparently worth visiting, so we’ll likely take a day trip there too.

7) Topeka

From Kansas City, we’ll be heading west to Topeka – the state capital. We’ll be there 6 nights and will likely visit the following attractions:

• Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site
• Kansas Museum of History
• Lake Shawnee
• State Capitol building
• Wizard of Oz museum (this is a little further west in Wamego)

We haven’t done much research for Topeka, so we’ll probably find lots more stuff to see once we arrive.

8) Hutchinson

Our final city in Kansas will be Hutchinson. Hutchinson is the whole reason we decided to visit Kansas at this time of year as it’s home to an underground 5k in a salt mine in February.

They also have a space museum called Cosmosphere, while somewhat nearby there’s McPherson County Old Mill Museum and Coronado Heights in Lindsborg, Mennonite Heritage and Agricultural Museum in Goessel, Mushroom Rock State Park in Brookville and Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum in Abilene.

We only have 5 nights in Hutchinson, so we’ll hopefully be able to fit all these activities in during that time.

Your Suggestions

So that’s what we have planned, but what else should be on our list? If you know of any fun things to do in Kansas, let us know in the comments below and we’ll add them to our list.