Kansas is a Midwestern state located right in the heart of America. As a matter of fact, along the state’s northern border is a small monument marking the geographic center of the contiguous United States! So far my travels here have been limited to the eastern part of the state, where I visited the capital and Kansas’s largest city, and topped that off with some short hikes in the tallgrass prairies. There’s still much left for me to do here, and on my next visit I plan to head out west where you can find the state high point as well as some unique scenery.
Explore Topeka
Kansas’s capital of Topeka has a population of around 125,000 and was built along the banks of the Kansas River. The settlement began as a small ferry service to help those who were early on their journey out west, and eventually grew into the state capital. Topeka is possibly best known for its role in the civil rights movement, particularly the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case that helped bring an end to racial segregation in public schools.
Explore Wichita
The largest city in Kansas has a population of nearly 400,000. Wichita is also known as the Air Capital of the World, as several large aircraft manufacturers have been located around the city. Wichita’s Exploration Place has many interesting and fun exhibits, including the chance to design your own airplane and fly aircraft using flight simulators! Other things to do in Wichita include visiting Old Town, a historic district filled with restaurants, shops, entertainment, and preserved 19th-century buildings.
Explore the Tallgrass Prairie
Several hundred years ago, tallgrass prairie covered a huge portion of central North America. Some of the grasses can occasionally reach nine feet, or almost three meters, in height! The vast majority of the original tallgrass prairie was eventually converted to farmland because of its rich soil, leaving only small patches of the ecosystem today. At the more than 10,000-acre Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas, visitors can still experience this landscape and see a herd of bison roaming across the prairie.
