Top 10: Kansas

This month we are celebrating Kansas, a lovely state that has more going for it than just fields of beautiful sunflowers. It was such fun to research it for our Kansas Map Print and our Flint Hills, Kansas City Print. We are excited to have our Kansas’ Top 10 written by Jayhawk, journalist, baker and animal-lover, Brenna Hawley.

Brenna and her grandpa at his 50th wedding anniversary at the Brookville Hotel.

Brookville Hotel Lobby

1. Brookville Hotel – Abilene
While this place is neither in Brookville nor a hotel, it is easily one of my favorite places on the planet. It’s a traditional fried chicken dinner restaurant that moved to Abilene a few years ago. There’s only one menu, but it’s been the same forever. My grandparents had their 50th wedding anniversary here back when it was still in Brookville, and it’s one of my favorite memories waiting eagerly for my grandparents to find their surprise. Now, when I eat here, I always bring home a tub of mashed potatoes. They’re my favorite food!

2. Coronado Heights – Lindsborg
Said to be a hill where Coronado surveyed the Kansas landscape back in the 1500s, it now has a sort of stone castle built on the hill. Climb up to the top and you can see the Kansas landscape for miles. It’s a great place for a picnic and hiking, and it’s beautiful at almost any time of the year, except when covered in snow. It’s another nostalgic place for me, because my grandparents got engaged here in 1942. How’s that for history?

KS countryside near Claflin

3. Flint Hills
Everyone seems to think Kansas is flat as a pancake, but drive through these hills (or walk up those darn hills on campus at KU) and you’ll think differently. These rolling hills are unbelievably gorgeous and are another place where you can see for miles. Even if you don’t stop, you can see these hills while driving through on I-70.

Farmland forever in Lewis

downtown Lewis

4. Little towns (Lewis)
One of the wonderful things about Kansas is you can see small towns in all their glory, past or present. Every year I drive with my dad and grandma down to Lewis, where my grandma and grandpa grew up. Unfortunately, this is a town that is slowly dying, with a downtown with few stores and a school where kids no longer attend. But there’s something still charming about this place and others like it around the state.

waving the wheat at a KU football game

real wheat in western KS – Brenna and her grandma

5. Farmland

We have a tradition at the University of Kansas called waving the wheat. Whenever the football team scores a touchdown, all the fans in the stadium will wave their arms and it looks like a wheat field. That’s one of my favorite things about going into farmland in Kansas — the rolling fields of wheat, corn, soybeans and countless other crops. Visiting my uncle’s farm is also a great escape from every day life — I’ve bottle-fed a calf, held baby pigs and made friends with a donkey.

The Oz Museum

6. The Wizard of Oz – Wamego, Liberal
Everyone knows you can’t have a list about Kansas without this movie on it! There are quite a few places that lay claim to the movie. In Wamego, you can visit the Oz Museum, Oz Winery or Toto’s Tacoz. The town’s even painting its new water tower to looks like the hot air balloon from the story. Or you can head to Liberal, which says it is the official hometown of Dorothy. You can even tour her house!

7. The University of Kansas – Lawrence
I’ve visited some other campuses in my day, and I don’t think I’m completely unbiased, but KU is one of the most gorgeous places I’ve ever been, especially during fall or spring. The trees are giant, the buildings historic and the people friendly. There are the icons – Fraser Hall flags, the Campanile – and other buildings you might only know if you go to school there – Stauffer-Flint Hall. But I wouldn’t give my four years of school there for anything!

Allen Fieldhouse

8. Allen Fieldhouse – Lawrence
I was born and bred to be a Kansas Jayhawk. Both my parents have two degrees from the University of Kansas. I even went to preschool on campus. So when I step into the basketball arena that is Allen Fieldhouse, I literally get chills. When the pregame video starts to play and I see Danny Manning in 1988, Wilt Chamberlain straddling the lane and Mario making his miracle shot, I can’t help myself, I just get taken up in the game. There is nothing more exciting than a KU basketball game in the loudest arena in the country.

The Garden of Eden

9. Garden of Eden – Lucas
Okay, there’s a little bit of wacky in Kansas, too. This is a house that is surrounded by concrete sculptures commenting on socialism and people in power in the early 1900s. The kicker? The guy who did all this, Samuel Dinsmoor, is buried in a concrete mausoleum on the lot. You can see him through glass, hair and all.

Country Club Plaza

10. Kansas City
This is cheating a little, because it’s a whole city. But there are a bunch of wonderful things to do in the city, which is actually partly in Missouri, which is also why it’s cheating. There’s the Country Club Plaza, the KC Zoo, the Kansas Speedway. Whatever, it has Kansas in its name!

A little ’bout Brenna: She worked at her college paper throughout her years at KU, thus the Jayhawk part (rock chalk!), and since graduation has been a reporter at the Lawrence Journal-World. She combines her passion for baking and writing in her blog Ingredients of a 20something. And then there’s the animal-lover part. “I love my cat Melvin, even when he wakes me up in the middle of the night by running laps in my bedroom. Like last night.” Thanks Brenna!