Wichita, Kansas

The photo above was taken at the Old Cowtown Museum. We first rode past this place on our bikes one day and stopped only long enough to grab a brochure. That brochure did its job, after reading it, we decided it was worth coming back for a proper visit.

This isn’t your typical indoor, “don’t touch anything” kind of museum. It’s more like stepping into a reconstructed frontier town spread over about 23 acres, with more than 50 historic and replica buildings. There are homes, shops, a saloon (of course), a schoolhouse, a grain elevator, and even a working farm. In other words, the kind of place where you half expect someone to challenge you to a duel at high noon. Along with the buildings, the museum had costumed interpreters wandering about, ready to answer questions and bring the time period to life.

The Old Cowtown Museum is located near the original Chisholm Trail, a network of routes that brought Texas longhorn cattle north to Kansas, where they could be loaded onto trains and shipped east. This is what helped turn Wichita into a booming “cow town” in the 1870s, basically the Wild West version of a logistics hub.

While strolling through the museum, Jackie tried her hand at lassoing a Texas longhorn calf. As you can see from the photo, the calf did not escape, which means she has hidden cowboy skills.

According to the brochure, Old West characters like Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, and Wyatt Earp once lived in Wichita. The museum also proudly claims that Billy the Kid’s mother, Catherine McCarty, ran a laundry business in town, but historians aren’t entirely convinced. Let’s just say the brochure may be leaning slightly toward the “good story” version of history.

We did manage to get our e-bikes out a few times while in Wichita, including one especially nice ride along the Arkansas River. At the point where the Little Arkansas River meets the Arkansas River stands the Keeper of the Plains, a monument honoring the Indigenous heritage of the area. As you can see from the photo below, the statue sits on a rock promontory and is quite impressive. You can walk, or in our case, ride your bike, right up to the base via pedestrian bridges.

Surrounding the monument are five large fire pits that are lit nightly for about 15 minutes. They symbolize important elements of Plains Indigenous culture and create a dramatic effect around the statue. It’s one of those things that probably makes you stop, take it in, and linger a little longer than you planned (which, in our case, seems to happen a lot).

For our last day in Wichita we drove to “Old Town” intent on taking the “GPSmyCity” self-guided walking tour. The highlight of the tour turned out to be our lunch at “River City Brewer”. You can guess that this was a micro brewery. In addition to the expected large stainless steel vats of beer the restaurant displayed a plaque with a quote from “Cliff Calvin of Cheers”.

“Well you see Norm, its like this…A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole because the general speed and health of the whole herd keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

In much the same way the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells.  Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”

Although I had never been to Kansas before, Jackie reminded me that she had. Back in the days when we flew a Piper PA-28R Arrow, she actually flew to Kansas to have a STOL (Short Take Off and Landing) kit installed. At the time, she was working for IBM Canada and managed to combine the trip with business travel. Her boss allowed her to expense commercial airfare, which was convenient, because flying our own plane was quite a bit more expensive.

We’re headed to a Kansas State Park on a lake north of Topeka next which looks really nice online.