Kansas Visitor's Guide 2007/2008 - (Page 18) Kansas STATE JOURNAL Cowboy Capital Saddle up, pardner, and point your pony toward Dodge City. Wyatt Earp would feel right at home around the stagecoaches, gunplay and chuckwagon grub you’ll find here. SUNFLOWER SPREAD YOUR PICNIC blanket at these small-town parks and green spaces. Elk Falls, Elk Falls — An antique iron bridge looks down on the tumbling water interrupting the Elk River at the edge of the tiny town with the same name. You can hike down to the falls and sit on the big rock shelves while enjoying your meal. Courthouse Square, Iola —You don’t need to bring dessert to the summer concerts performed by the Iola Municipal Band every Thursday evening. The concerts, held at the bandstand since 1871, are also ice cream socials. Afterward, head to the old-fashioned 54 Drive-In Theatre in Gas for a double feature. Forest Park, Parsons —The shady umbrella of dozens of huge trees towers over playgrounds, tennis courts, a disc golf course and a miniature train for kids to ride. Picnic shelters provide rainy-day cover. To cool down, take a dip in the nearby city pool. & DO IN THE Pack a PICNIC DODGE CITY’S BOOT HILL Museum and Old Front Street re-create life in the most fabled cowtown of the American West. From Boot Hill to the Long Branch Saloon, the museum and Front Street are replicas of the town in the days when Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson kept the peace, more or less. Six-shooters boom and desperados race for cover several times a day during mock gunfights that don’t seem to faze horses pulling stagecoaches full of happy kids. Most nights, the Marchel Ranch on the north edge of town welcomes modern cowpokes to chuckwagon dinners of beef, beans and cobbler and western shows that are part rodeo, part Grand Ole Opry. For years, Dodge City was a key way station on the Santa Fe Trail. West of town, markers lead visitors to a long stretch of wagon tracks still visible along the famed frontier trade route. SEE 18 Official Kansas Visitors Guide PHOTOGRAPHS, FROM TOP: JOHN NOLTNER (2), MICHAEL C. SNELL THINGS TO
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