By Tommy Zimmer
According to Suburban Stats, Inc., close to three million people live in Kansas. In 2011, around thirty-two million people visited Kansas that year, The Topeka-Capital Journal reported. Those visitors spent around $8 billion, which was nine percent greater than had been spent in 2010. This makes up about six percent of the $131 billion gross domestic product the state had that year. Kansans themselves were also tourists themselves, as they made up around forty-four percent of tourism spending as people from outside Kansas coming to explore counted for around fifty-six percent of the spending in the state. What is significant even more to note is the $8 million foreigners spent in the state. Kansas is a unique place itself to visit.
Kansas Summer Wheat and Summer Panorama
The state delayed ending prohibition, even with the passage of the 21st Amendment in 1933, until 1937. Kansas lawmakers finally defined beer as having a 3.2 percent or less abv. It also has some of the toughest liquor laws you’ll see in the United States. The state has had thirteen dry counties since December 2012, prohibiting liquor sales on-premises but still allowing the sale of beer with a 3.2 percent abv. It can help prevent those from developing alcoholism and needing help from the best alcohol rehab centers.
While you might run into some problems here and there with being able to drink alcohol, especially for out-of-towners that enjoy a nice cold beverage, it could be helpful to consider a number of other possible activities to take part in:
1.) The Old Cowtown Museum. Located in Wichita, Kansas, you can enjoy a little taste of the frontier during the late 1860s and 1870s. What you can find here includes period furnishings, clothing and domestic textiles, tools, and machinery, farming equipment and various old photographs, letters and documents you can look through in an archival collection. You may get a sense of the way things once were and how that made the present time what it was.
2.) Fort Scott National Historic Site. When you find yourself in Fort Scott Kansas, you may wish to explore an old 1840s military fort as you find yourself experiencing the past of Kansas. You will get a sense of the many lives of a surgeon, a sutler, soldiers, laundresses and more on the site. You might be transported to the past and given an experience you’ll never forget.
3.) Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead. Should you be bringing along your kids for the travel excursion, this could be the perfect place for you. Over 250 different animals such as birds exist and you can take your kids into the country schoolhouse with one room. Additionally, you may find it interesting to visit the Native American encampment. Your children are bound to make many memories with riding horse-drawn wagons or bottle feeding baby goats. Take the trip to Overland Park, Kansas and check out this amazing place.
4.) Sedgwick County Zoo. Should your kids be looking for something else and maybe you are interested in checking out some more animals, this zoo may be the perfect place to get a little taste of what it’s like to experience the forest or jungle. You might find yourself intrigued by the Chimpanzee Habitat, which opened in 1996 or the Cargill Learning Center, which was created in 2006. The key to the Sedgwick Learning Center is allowing others to appreciate, respect and learn about the animals and their habitats. One of the latest offerings was the Slawson Family Tiger Trek that opened up in 2006. Checking out various tigers can always be fun not only for you the traveler but the rest of your family as well, should they be coming along with you for the ride.
While you might never have been to Kansas before, this could be the chance you have to check out the Prairie State. Take the chance to see things you’ve never experience. Maybe, you wish to experience the old west and decide to go over to Dodge City, Kansas to get a better sense of it all. Should you be in Wichita, it’s only a little over two hours of a drive. You definitely have a lower chance of developing alcoholism and potentially going to the best alcohol rehab centers. So much is available to explore in Kansas that you’ll be happy you did once have.
About the author: Tommy Zimmer is a writer whose work has appeared online and in print. His work covers a variety of topics, including politics, economics, health and wellness, addiction and recovery and the entertainment industry.
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