Kansas Roadtrip – 2019 - A Milian Adventures

So we were planning on going on another multi day bike trip over the Labor Day weekend, but I had to go and spoil our plans by spraining my ankle playing kickball. Not wanting to be out in ‘the wilderness’ if my ankle decided to flare up we had to last minute come up with a new plan. While scanning the internet for ideas that were still relatively close by, I stumbled across the museum of “The World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things” and a plan was born. We decided we would do a roadside attraction road trip in Central Kansas.

Lindsborg, KS

We decided to keep the trip to just one day, so Saturday night (after cheering Sporting Kansas City to victory) we made the 3 hour drive out to the small town of Lindsborg, Kansas. Lindsborg is known for its Swedish heritage and has thus deemed itself “Little Sweden, USA”.

Sunday morning we started our day off by checking out the heritage square (from the outside because they were closed Sundays). This is Lindsborg’s neat plaza/park type area with a collection of historic buildings, including the 1904 World’s Fair Swedish pavilion. After wandering around the area a little it was still too early for breakfast – because small towns never seem to open up for breakfast early enough – so we made our way out to Coronado heights, a castle located just outside town! Okay, it may have just been a PWA project, and therefore more of a glorified gazebo shaped like a castle, but it was still really cool, and if we had waited a little longer for some of the fog to clear we might have had some pretty decent views (believe it or not, there are hills in Kansas). For breakfast we wanted to treat ourselves, so we made our way over to the Swedish Crown for some traditional Swedish breakfast – which for me was just Swedish pancakes! After breakfast we walked around the main street downtown area (only like a mile long) which was lined with painted Dala horses referred to as “the herd”– most painted to match their amazingly punny names, like ‘Yankee Doodle Dala’, and ‘Follow the Dala Brick road’. I got a kick out of all of them. Our last stop before leaving Lindsborg was exploring the Courtyard Gallery and Bakery, which was just a really cool building with a lot of fun art for sale. They also had a neat honor system bakery with pastries that smelled and looked so good that we felt obliged to buy some Swedish bread for the road.

Some of "the herd". the collection of Dala Horses in Lindsborg. (Dalamation top right, and Yankee Dala Dandy bottom left)

Food from the Swedish Crown in Lindsborg, KS

Mushroom Rock State Park

After Lindsborg, the next stop was Mushroom Rock State Park. This was a small park, in fact Kansas’s smallest state park, with really cool geological features that are shaped like – you guessed it – mushrooms. All three of them. Although the park was pretty small, it was still really cool to see.

Wilson, KS

On our way up to Lucas, Kansas (the home of the previous mentioned museum of interest), we went through Wilson, Kansas. Wilson is home to the World’s largest Czech egg, and their main street had several smaller but still quite large painted eggs around town. For lunch we were planning to go to Made from Scratch, but sadly they were void of vegetarian options (aside from salad) so we waved goodbye to the delicious pies and instead went to Grandmas old fashion soda shop where we were able to get some fun sodas and pizza for lunch. We took the Post Rock Scenic Byway from Wilson up to Lucas, Kansas. The drive was really pretty and went past Wilson Lake, it actually reminded me of some of the views we saw in Washington earlier this year.

Lucas, KS

Our first stop in Lucas was the Garden of Eden. It is the former house of Samuel Dinsmor, a man who built his out of concrete blocks shaped and stacked so it appeared to be a log cabin. This was his first step to becoming a tourist attraction. Apparently there was a lower bar for entertainment back in the day… Out front there are also several crazy concrete sculptures he created to describe his religious and political views. We were also surprised to find his mummified body there for viewing as well- I guess he wanted to remain a tourist attraction even after death.

As a side note, they kept calling them “cement” sculptures which made me cringe as a structural engineer – for those of you who don’t know, cement is an ingredient of concrete – if you are unsure which it is, it’s probably concrete, not cement.

Down the road from the Garden of Eden was another site to behold – Bowl Plaza: “the second best bathroom in the US”! Apparently there is a competition every year, and they won in 2014. The bathroom is decorated inside and out with intricate mosaics of found objects and tiles. From the outside it was shaped like a toilet, complete with a dog lapping up water from the bowl, and a large roll of toilet paper. Inside the two restrooms followed gender norms, with a lot of intricate floral patterns in the women’s restroom, and cars and action figures in the men’s (we both snuck in to the opposite restrooms to compare, and the men’s was definitely better).

Finally it was time for the main attraction: “the world’s largest collection of the world’s smallest versions of the world’s largest things”. Sadly, the much anticipated attraction was closed. I guess they are open ‘by luck or appointment only’ – and luck was not on our side. At least we were able to smudge up their windows a bit and see the small versions of the Kansas collection.

By the time we left Lucas, Kansas it was about 3pm, so we started the 3 ½ hour drive home. We had briefly entertained the idea of stopping at Rock City Park (a collection of rocks similar to Mushroom State Park, but smaller and you’re encouraged to climb on them) but my ankle was starting to flare up, so we decided to nix the detour. We did make one final stop to see the world’s largest spur before driving the rest of the way home and concluding our random adventure through Kansas.

Because anyone who knows anything about roadside attractions is probably wondering – no we did not stop at the world’s largest Ball of Twine (Cawker City, KS) – it was just slightly too far out of the way for us to tag onto this road trip. We did however listen to the 99% Invisible podcast episode “Great Balls of Twine” to get us in the mood. From it we did learn that there are actually 4 World’s Largest Balls of Twine, and Kansas only holds one.

Grinter Farms (Tonganoxie/Lawrence)

It wasn’t on this same trip, but I’m also including some pictures of the sunflower fields at Grinter Farms. Our original plan had been to include the sunflowers with our Kansas road trip, but the crop this year was a little late to bloom, so we waited to go until the following week. The sunflowers are at their peak for only a few weeks, but it is definitely a site to experience if you are ever in the area! The experience was very surreal, and Andrew got a kick out of watching all the bugs. I must say it was pretty fun to watch some of bees who were so covered in yellow pollen they looked a little drunk while trying to fly.