While we were in Wichita cheering on Calvin and the rest of our Eagle tracksters at the State Track meet, we made a little family vacay out of the long weekend. We checked out the Keeper of the Plains on the River. . .
. . . as well as some of the cool Native American displays surrounding it.
Then we walked back to our car and found tons of geese and an adorable little goose family!
We drove downtown and saw the beautiful Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
Then we met up with Hookers and headed to Chicken-N-Pickle for a fun evening.
It was a beautiful evening and we enjoyed listening to the live music and catching up while the kids played.
We stayed with Hookers that night and all went to the track meet early Friday morning. After Calvin was done running, we got checked into our hotel for the night. This Hampton Inn had the highest ceilings we've ever seen in a hotel room! We attempted to relax for a bit, but these kids of mine are a bit too crazy.
We had a few hours of daylight left so decided to go exploring. The Sunflower Summer app has all sorts of activities for free this summer, and since we probably won't be back in Wichita, we decided to make the most of it!
Our first visit using the app was the Kansas Aviation Museum. This museum was housed in the original airport in Wichita, which was pretty cool. At one point, Wichita was considered the Air Capital of the World!
Some of the history of air travel was really interesting! And creepy.
It was fun seeing the control tower, still set up as it was in the 1930s when the airport was built.
There were so many cool exhibits inside with tons of history. . .
. . . and then we got to outside, also! The airfield had lots of military and commercial planes. We were able to go inside a FedEx cargo plane. It was about what you'd expect :) But kinda cool to walk in the belly of a plane like this anyway.
This beast of a plane from WWII was the most impressive one, in my opinion.
This is the type of missile that would be launched out of this plane.
From the airfield, you could see the whole building, including the air traffic control tower we'd just been in.
The Kansas Aviation Museum was really neat! I'm glad we were able to tour it. From there, we headed to Texas Roadhouse for dinner, and then did a little shopping at T J Maxx, (I'd forgotten my swimsuit and Evelyn REALLY wanted me to swim with her at the hotel, so we found one after dinner.) It was funny how we saw track teams EVERYWHERE we went in Wichita, including the T J Maxx!
Mom and Dad joined us at our hotel pool for the evening.
The next morning we enjoyed a delicious breakfast at our Hampton, and then headed back to Hookers house for a final visit of the weekend.
Syd and Wes had a very important job for Oliver and Evelyn -- helping to transfer the adolescent chickens into the big coop.
As you can see, Evie wasn't so sure at first, but they ended up getting the job done.
From Hookers' house, we headed to the Zoo! (Yes, it was a bit sunny for our selfie.)
Calvin wasn't going to be running until later and the zoo was also free on the app, so we took advantage! Being there early before it got hot, there were lots of animals out.
I tried to skip the aviary, but Oliver convinced me we should go in, and I'm so glad we did -- there were tons of really pretty birds in there!
And I can't ever resist this picture. . .
Calvin wasn't with us this time, of course, but I smiled thinking about our zoo trip to Wichita in 2008 when he did the "wingspan" picture. Now this boy is competing at the state track meet!
These zebras were cracking me up, rolling around on the ground and then staring at us like, "What are YOU looking at??"
Just a few other great animals we saw that morning:
Thanks, Sedgwick County Zoo, for a great morning marveling at God's creativity! From the zoo, we went to watch the boys run the 4x800 and stayed at the stadium for another hour or so until it got pretty hot. Since we still had a couple hours before Calvin would run the 300 hurdles, we took off for one last Wichita destination using our Sunflower Summer app: The Exploration Place. This place was so cool!
The boys found the Skee Ball and Evie and I played some humongous Operation.
We also spun the wheel to learn about health care professionals. I rigged it so it would land on the pharmacist, and listened to a fellow pharmacist from Wichita explain all about what we do!
This game had Evie quickly changing positions to keep her body in the shape on the projection. And the next one had her skeleton dancing. So fun!
This 'ride' was hilarious as it let the kids experience their feelings through the motion. Their faces were cracking me up!
We went to the live "Magic of Science" show and it was really interesting!
After the show, the kids whacked-a-virus. . .
There was also more aviation fun here, and the kids got to compare this tornado experience with the one in Salina from a couple months ago (they said this one was more intense, in case you were wondering).
Perhaps my favorite part of this entire place was the miniature Kansas display. Since our family has been to pretty much every landmark/historic site/rock formation in our great state, it was fun to find them all in this huge collection. I'll share just a couple pictures of Castle Rock and the Chase County Courthouse.
As we were walking out, we could see the Keeper of the Plains across the River. The Exploration Place had SO much to do!
This app saved us over $200 in admission fees for the 3 places we were able to visit -- such a fun bonus for our already-fun weekend in Wichita! I'm so thankful for time spent with my family (even if it's only a partial-family vacation). Memorial Day weekend has summer off to a great start!!
