Hutchinson, Kansas - April 2nd, 2022
Sometimes it’s nice to revisit places you’ve been before. Visiting Hutchinson again gave us an even better impression than when we’ve visited before.
It was dinner time by the time we reached Sand Hills State Park on Friday. The campground is not as nice as Wilson State Park, but that would be hard to beat. The campground is mainly set up for large RV’s. We did not see a tent camping area. There was only one bathhouse, and it was locked. It was April Fools Day, but this was not a joke. The bathhouse doesn’t open for the season until April 15th. As we contemplated getting out our emergency camping toilet, Keith looked at the map of the state park on his phone. The map showed a trailhead just across the street with a restroom. He wandered across the street to check it out. Sure enough, there was a vault toilet just behind the trees at the trailhead. It was nothing to write home about, but it will do. There were no latches on the doors, but we believe we were the only ones using it.
Hutchinson is a large city compared to the small towns we visited the day before. It is home to the Hutchinson Community College and Strataca, formerly known as the Kansas Underground Salt Museum. We’ve been to Hutchinson before. The salt museum tour is very interesting and worth a stop. However, this time we were revisiting Cosmosphere, a world-class space museum, by Keith’s request.
Yes, we know, we normally are not museum people, but we make some exceptions for air and space museums. Keith enjoys these more than Ann, but Ann still has a good time, even though she usually reaches her saturation point before Keith does.
We bought the All Day admission ticket which includes the Carey Digital Dome Theater, the Justice Planetarium, Dr. Goddard’s Lab, the naviGATOR Simulator, and the Hall of Space Museum. We became excited when we learned we were old enough to qualify for the senior discount. Wait, we’re excited about being old? Are senior discounts a ploy to make people feel better about their age?
There were three films being shown in the Dome Theater. None of them were about space: “Ireland”, “BBC Earth: Antartica”, and “Into America’s Wild”. We chose Ireland. We’ve never been to Ireland and now we have a list of things we want to see when we visit there, someday.
Dr. Goddard’s Lab was an interesting demonstration of explosions, teaching the science behind how rockets work along with a little history of Dr. Robert H. Goddard, considered the father of modern rocket propulsion.
After watching the planetarium show, we finally entered the actual museum. The museum is a wonderful progression of the history of space exploration, starting with rocketry during World War II. Cosmosphere is celebrating its 60th year and has an impressive collection of artifacts, including the Liberty Bell 7, which Cosmosphere and the Discovery Channel retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean.
From Cosmosphere, we drove over to Main Street. The most interesting historic buildings are in the stretch between the Hutchinson Station train station to Avenue A Park. Our favorite building is the Hutchinson Fox Theater, just east of Main Street on 1st Avenue.
After dinner back at Sand Hills State Park , we took a short walk up to the top of a sandy hill. From there we could see a network of trails across the landscape. The park has 14 miles of trails woven among the sand dunes, grasslands, wetlands, and woodlands. Some of the trails allow horses. We noticed that some of the campsites in the campground had individual horse corrals included with them. While we were on the trail, a powered parachute circled over our heads for a little while. It gave us a good show.
We had a wonderful day in Hutchinson. The town has a nice feel to it along with some nice attractions. We’re sure we’ll be back.
Check out our related video: Hutchinson, Kansas
(Ann)