State 42: Kansas!

Traveling again! My heart is happy! 

Day1: Mike and I made it to Wichita, Kansas which is my 42nd state!  We started our morning by going to Botanica- we spent about an hour there. They have about 20 acres and over 4,000 unique plant species.

We then drove to Old Cowtown Museum which was really interesting! It’s 23 acres of living history! It recreates a typical frontier town in Wichita from 1865-1880. There are about 44 historic structures and period furnishings. Volunteers in costume also demonstrate things like black smithing and printing which brings it all to life. 

The outside of the schoolhouse 

Inside the schoolhouse 

Blurb about old time dentistry 

Dentist office 

I found this place called Merle’s and we had lunch there. Had an amazing BLT! It’s considered one of the cities oldest bars. (Est 1935!!) 

My BLT sandwich (half eaten) 

We drove past the Keeper of the Plains statue as we headed towards the Arcade. The statue symbolizes unity, resilience and the enduring spirit of Native American tribes. 

Spent a little over an hour at the arcade. I didn’t grow up with a lot of those games so it was a little challenging for me. 

Keeper of the Plains

At the arcade

Since Mike is journeying with me we had to make a stop at a board game place. It wasn’t that great so I won’t bother mentioning it on here and then we headed to Wamego, Kansas for the night. 

Fun story: I’ve been talking about how I wanted to see the Wizard of Oz again since we were going to the Oz museum while in Kansas. When we got to our hotel, Mike was flipping through tv channels and there it was! 

Day 2: Started out our day at the Oz Museum. You can’t go to Kansas without seeing something Wizard of Oz, right?! 

The Oz museum has over 2,000 artifacts including a tornado prop house, munchkin costumes, all 40 Oz books including first edition books by L. Frank Baum. 

The museum was better than Mike thought it was going to be. (And it was just as I had hoped!) We both enjoyed the documentary featuring an Oz historian. Learned a lot of new and fun facts such as in the book, Dorothy’s slippers were silver. MGM changed them to ruby slippers to showcase the new technicolor film process. 

The town of Wamego has 18 painted Toto dogs scattered throughout town which is kind of fun!

Pausing here as this was the end of our Kansas journey. More for day 2 coming up in a Nebraska blog!