Saturday April 9, 2022

Note: The yellow lines on the map represent walking, green is driving.

When I saw what Wichita had to offer I decided to stay in town for an extra day and explore a little. I was very impressed.

I had to choose carefully because Wichita has several attractions that interested me but ruled out two of the most popular options, the Exploration Space and The Old Cowtown Museum. Exploration Space is an interactive science museum and, being a Saturday, I knew there was no way I would get to play with the exhibits because it would be full of children. Cowtown is a large outdoor site recreating Wichita as it was in 1865 and seemed too similar to Dodge City’s Boot Hill Museum.

I ended up visiting two great museums and also walked several miles along the city’s river trail. I will describe these places, as best I can, using photos.

The city’s Old Town was buzzing with a Farm and Art market this morning. This revitalized area is pedestrian friendly and offers many free city parking lots which are maintained by fees paid by nearby businesses. This seems to be a good model for other cities to follow.

I was here to visit the Museum of World Treasures which has a different approach than most. Instead of specializing in one particular region, topic or culture it presents a huge variety of subjects from around the world in summary format. The exhibit above shows their T Rex fossil which, at 50% complete, represents one of the most complete fossils found in North America.

The next gallery contained religious statues from across Asia. Each of the four marble Buddhas above were from different countries.

The most representative of what I called the summary approach was in the exhibit on American Presidents. There was a long wall with each President represented by some quotes, a document or two and a timeline of their most significant achievements.

Despite being out of office for over a year they had only come up with these quotes for Donald Trump; no documents or achievements yet.

Other exhibits covered composers and classical music, the Vietnam, Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the fall of the Berlin wall (including a section of the wall), ancient Egyptian mummies and coffins and the European Renaissance. It is a weird and wonderful place to gain just enough knowledge to make you more curious for details.

I then headed to the Arkansas River Trail. The centerpiece of the trail is this 44 feet (13 m) high steel sculpture called The Keeper of the Plains by a local Native American artist. It is located at the confluence of the Big and Little Arkansas rivers just opposite the Exploration Space and is surrounded by multiple displays describing Native American life before settlement by Europeans while Native American pipe music plays.

Unlike most river walks this is a real park where the trail runs right along the riverbank and everywhere is fully accessible. There are no private plots to skirt around, the path continues under the bridges but there are ramps to access each bridge if you want to cross the river.

Every so often there is a monument just back from the river’s edge, such as this one to honor those killed (of all nations) in the Vietnam War. In addition there are frequent seating areas right on the bank of the river and, surprisingly given the winds of the past few days, there was practically no trash in the river. The wind had died down, it was sunny and almost 70º F (21º C) and I very much enjoyed walking several miles.

My final visit of the day was to the Kansas Aviation Museum. I had not realized that Wichita was so important in the aviation world but it is known as the Air Capital of the World with Cessna, Beechcraft and Bombadier/Lear planes assembled here as well as an Airbus engineering center. It is estimated that a total of about 250,000 planes currently in use were assembled here. The museum is based in an Art Deco building that was once the terminus of the municipal airport.

The first commercial plane built in the US, the Laird Swallow, was built in Wichita in 1920. Although 43 aircraft were made none survive and this is a replica built by the museum using the original plans.

The museum has an outside display and occupies a corner of McConnell Air Force Base which can be seen from the control tower on top of the old terminal building.

Overall I was very impressed by the public spaces and facilities I visited in Wichita. It’s a great place to visit and seems like a very liveable city.