Kansas Visitor's Guide 2007/2008 - (Page 43) THERE’ S NO BETTER PLACE to learn frontier Sedgwick County Zoo, which history than Kansas. Gunslingers strutting along the also has a petting zoo. dusty streets and creaking boardwalks of the For a tasty sample of cowboy frontier village in the Old Cowtown Museum just food and fun, drive 15 miles can’t seem to keep their tempers under control or northeast of the city to the their six-shooters holstered. Several times a day on Prairie Rose Chuckwagon weekends, plumes of black-powder smoke and a Supper. Barbecue, cowboy songs fusillade of window-rattling bangs signal gunplay in this and train rides are served up at this re-created 1870s cowtown. The commotion never seems to working cattle ranch. Before you head to faze the high-kicking dance-hall girls at Fritz Snitzler’s the Prairie Rose, you might want to stop for some Saloon, where you and the kids are as welcome as a crew of duds at Sheplers. The store boasts that it sells “the dusty trail hands with a month’s wages to burn. world’s largest selection of Western wear.” In all, 26 buildings from Wichita’s rambunctious Exploration continued in Kansas after the frontier frontier days line Old Cowtown’s Main Street. Visitors closed —Wichita inventors and innovators were among can watch presses turn at the printer’s shop and a the pioneers of aviation. Today, the city is home to five blacksmith hammer red-hot iron. A covered wagon aircraft manufacturers. More important to kids, the city shuttles visitors to the DeVore Farm, where honors this legacy with some cool hands-on aviation costumed interpreters bring the rural 1880s to life. museums. At Exploration Place, young visitors can test their At the nearby Mid-America All-Indian Center, skill in two flight simulators. Among the aircraft on display at the 44-foot-tall Keeper of the Plains sculpture of a the Kansas Aviation Museum are some 25 planes built in Plains tribesman overlooks a Native American Wichita by Boeing, Learjet and Cessna. village — complete with an authentic tepee and About 50 miles northwest of town, in Hutchinson, imagine a grass lodge — that children can explore. yourself among the stars at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Buffalo, prairie dogs and other Plains Center. America’s space program comes to life at this Smithsoniananimals have an honored spot among the affiliated museum, which features an array of space artifacts including gorillas, lions and more than 2,500 other the Apollo 13 module and a moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission. The animals in realistic settings at the center also showcases aircraft, including an SR-71 spy plane. The Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson. (Right) Wichita’s Old Cowtown Museum. For FAMILIES w w w. t r a v e l K S . c o m WICHITA 43
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