Best Western Heart Of America Inn Salina

The Tallgrass Prairie once covered 140 million acres of North America. The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve was established in 1996 to preserve, protect, and interpret the less than four percent of remaining tallgrass prairie ecosystem. The 10,894 acre preserve ...

Although Mushroom Rock State Park is the smallest state park in Kansas, it's the most interesting. The Park has Dakota sandstone concretions. There are many concretions in this Park, but some of it still remains and has been supporting three of the rocks for many years.

The resulting combination of rocks have a mushroom shape. The unusual shapes caught the imaginations of the Native Americans and pioneers, some of whom have left graffiti in softer sandstone.

Fort Larned NHS:

Fort Larned was established on the vast prairie in Western Kansas midway along the Santa Fe trail in 1859 to protect mail coaches, freighters and other Trail traffic from Plains Indians. With nine beautifully restored buildings, Fort Larned is the best preserved Indian Wars military post on the Santa Fe Trail. As the site of an Indian Agency, Fort Larned also was instrumental in maintaining friendly relations with Plains Indians. In July 1978, six years ...

... 8217;s other significant accomplishments during his Presidency included the Civil Rights Act of 1957; support of the Brown V. Board of Education’s desegregation of schools lawsuit; avoiding a nuclear war with the Soviet Union; and began NASA.

Dwight was nicknamed Ike. He was of German descent and in German, Eisenhower was pronounced "Ike- enhower". Dwight preferred to be remembered as General Eisenhower rather than President Eisenhower.

... Exposition) inspired L. Frank Baum to create “Emerald City” in the Wizard of Oz. The Columbian Theatre is located in Wamego, Kansas and houses many original paintings and other artifacts from the 1893 World’s Fair.

This Museum was the most disappointing site we visited since we began our cross country trip. We would not recommend that anyone go out of their way to visit this museum.

... as if they may have been from the original movie.

I had longed for a "Mom and Pop" restaurant and wasn't disappointed. Across the street from the Museum, was the "Friendly Cookery". Inside vinyl booths lined up down the wall and two old ladies and a young teen bustled about serving what appeared to be most of the elders in town. "Perfect" I thought to myself. "They have grilled cheese sandwiches." I ordered ...

We left Golden to a cold and dreary day and headed east. We knew we would not have to go up and down on the mountains but we are losing another hour as we are now in Central time. We have had the hardest time on figuring out when the shows are on especially if we use our satelite as that is on eastern time.

We were surprised how the land started to get rolling hills and green. Of course we saw more corn, hay and sunflowers.

Although we are ...

In the morning after eating cereal and packing the trailer up, we were just about to leave when dad noticed that the rear left tire on the van was loosing air pressure. So we went to an auto tire shop and got a new wheel .Fortunately, we were able to start heading west again only about an hour later than we planed. For lunch we ended up eating at McDonalds. Later in the after noon, we ...

... cd (Note to others - bring CDs on the trip!). Salina, Kansas was very windy and very warm when we arrived and the campground was right along the highway, certainly not as nice MarVal Camping Resort in Oklahoma. After pizza, we briefly went to the pool, ate some red,white and blue Dairy Queen Stars, and got the kids ready for bed ASAP. We were all done for the day, and tomorrow would be just as long in order to arrive Wednesday night in Denver.

... and Wyoming. By the time I had reached the Kansas border this had become the warmest day of my trip. A warm southerly breeze blew across the open plains. I stopped on the side of the road near Coolidge, Kansas to stand in a field and watch the sun set. The sun's light was intense and the whole plain reflected in a reddish-gold. It was the perfect end to a perfect day of sight-seeing. It also effectively ended my vacation from here on I was basically ...