Big Kansas Road Trip 2021, May 7-8
- mymandy14
- May 9, 2021
- 4 min read
If you aren't familiar with the Kansas Sampler Foundation, you need to be! As Kansas advocates and rural explorers, our family follows and supports this foundation. Their basic mission is to preserve and sustain rural culture. One of the many things they do is the Big Kansas Road Trip! They basically highlight EVERYTHING 3 neighboring rural counties have to offer, pick a 4-day weekend, and tell everyone and their friends to pile into these 3 counties to see the sights and support the local economy. And after a year like we've had, all counties could use this boost!
Since we are small business owners, we know the importance of supporting small! So we were only so happy to head to Brown and Nemaha Counties (we didn't make it to Doniphan County:( to find the fun and buy some goods!
SENECA, NEMAHA COUNTY, KS
Our first stop was Seneca in Nemaha County. The downtown was darling and had many shopping stops! The Chamber did a great promotion and gave us a Gnome Hunting map where we needed to go to different stores and find a little gnome hidden in their store somewhere! My son got real into this!
We bought a mother's day present at Soul Providers, purchased some treats at Cornerstone Coffee Haus, and read a few books at the Seneca Free Library. They also had a really neat fountain outside of the library that our kids loved!
SABETHA, NEMAHA COUNTY, KS
We drove onto Sabetha, KS also in Nemaha County where we stayed at Rock Creek Hotel. Eating was definitely on the agenda and we heard of the perfect place for us, Brick Street Furniture Co. & Wine Lounge! Read more about this restaurant review on our food/drink page!
After dinner, we heard the Peterson Brothers, the singing farm boys from Assaria, KS, were singing at Somerset Park, an amazing sports complex in Sabetha! We caught the tail end and heard classics like "I'm Farming and I Grow It," (to "Sexy and I Know It"), "Tractorstuck," (to "Thunderstruck") and "Chore" (to "Roar"). It was a beautiful night and the kids had fun on their nearby playground and rolling down a large hill-which lead to an "almost puking" episode from Wake!
The next morning we started the day at Downtown Coffee. Check out our full review and pictures on our food/drink page!
We also hit up a local park before the day got going so the kids could run around a bit. They had a neat park near downtown with a rock climbing wall and Wake had to try it!
FAMILY EXPLORER TIP!: If you are in a smaller town and you aren't sure what to do, always find a local park! No matter if it's small or large, kids always have fun on different park equipment that isn't in their hometown!
I noticed their downtown had a soda fountain at their local drug store. We didn't realize what a treat we would be in store for! The Sabetha Healthmart has A TON of kids toys and interesting games! No Sabetha parent ever has to freak out last minute when you forgot to buy a gift for one of your child's friend's birthday parties! From baby to teen, this place has a wall dedicated to games and toys! WOW! We bought each of our kids a game at this store. Dayne just plopped down and started "reading" all of the books available!
Their soda fountain drinks had so many fun ingredients! I got a lavender lemonade and my son got "Rose Colored Glasses" and blend of rose water, pomegranate and cranberry juices-WOW! We all agreed he won the drink order that morning!
If you ever make it to Sabetha, we would highly recommend checking this drug store out!
MORRILL, BROWN COUNTY, KS
Our highlight of the day was the Double G&L Farm, or the Grimm Family Farm. They held tours during the Big Kansas Road Trip and they were so gracious to spend an hour giving our family a private tour of their farm! This farm is quite the operation! Cows (both for milking and meat), goats, lambs, chickens, ducks, cats, dogs, rabbits, 1 donkey, 1 deer and 1 llama! Phew! This farming couple and their 5 daughters, along with staff, keep this operation up and running year round! The ladies do farm safety days, sewing lessons, a bakery, breed dogs and rabbits and so much more! The kids loved seeing the different animals and being hands on, and their two youngest daughters accompanied us and they were so cute and kind to our kids! Thank you to the Grimm family for this special tour! You can check them out on their YouTube channel also!
HIAWATHA, BROWN COUNTY, KS
In Hiawatha, we stopped for lunch at The Bread Bowl and you can find pictures and a review on our food/drink page! We then went to the Davis Memorial. Although you can find cool things, I'm not one to head to a cemetery on vacation. However, after reading more about this, we had to check it out! I won't go through all the history as you can find it here, but basically in the 1930's a wife died and the husband spent most of his wealth on a large memorial to their life. Different statues capture different times in their life, including "The Vacant Chair" after she passed. Her angel is praying over his burial site and his over hers. It really is a beautiful memorial, although is shrouded with controversy due to the extravagant nature of the memorial and building it in the Great Depression.
WETMORE, NEMAHA COUNTY, KS
Our one stop in Wetmore was right outside of it at the famous Shoe Tree! The story behind is nothing too inspiring, but people just started nailing shoes to the tree! So we had to see it! And it really was worth the drive! It's extremely large and shoes sprinkle all the way to the top! Unfortunately, we had no shoes to add to the tree, but the sight was unique and fun!
We unfortunately didn't make it to Doniphan County! When we do the Big Kansas Road Trip in the future we will take the full day of Friday off. You'll need at least 2 full days to get in the major sites! And more if you want to linger!
Have you been to Brown or Nemaha Counties in Kansas? What are your favorite things to do? What did we miss?
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