5/28/2022 – 5/30/2022
Part two of my trip back to Fargo. This is going to be the post that is picture heavy. I’ll put the museum pics at the bottom so you don’t have to scroll through them. This is going to be my last post for a while. Gas prices are too high for me to justify driving around the country. I’m going to redo the van while I’m home. I’ll make a post about that in the next month or so.
I left off in getting into Fayetteville, AR. On our way into town we stumbled upon a military museum, the Arkansas Air and Military Museum. When we went in we found out it was free for the Memorial Day weekend. They had a few Cobra helicopters and a C-130 cargo plane that you could walk through.
As we drove through Fayetteville I remembered that Wal-Mart started here. I pulled over and found where the original was and went to it. It’s been changed to an antique store now, but the building is still there. Fayetteville is a nice city, but still fairly far away from any big city.
Once we got to Wichita, KS I really wanted a pizza buffet. The first three places that we tried didn’t do the buffet since COVID. We finally found a Pizza Ranch that was still open to satisfy my craving. After eating we found a park to take a walk since we had been driving all day. We went downtown after the park and went to Nortons Brewing Company for a nightcap. This was an awesome brewery. They were playing metal music, had hip hop and rock murals on the walls, an amazing patio, and really good beer.
On the 29th we got coffee and a bite and then when to our first stop, Cosmosphere. I wanted to go here to see another SR-71. I was surprised with how they had is set up. You could get right up to it, but it was impossible to get a good picture of. The rest of the museum was dedicated to space. They had a really interesting history of the space race between the US and USSR. They had Soviet rocket engines, spacecraft, and artifacts on display along with the US counterparts. One of the coolest exhibits was the actual Apollo 13 capsule. This was a very neat place for space nerds. Again, I’ll post pics at the bottom.
To nerd out even more I found another military museum at the Museum Of Kansas National Guard in Topeka, KS. They had a few aircraft and a bunch of tanks/artillery pieces. They even had a couple of Soviet tanks that were captured from the Iraqi’s in Desert Storm. A few blocks away was the Combat Air Museum that Sounded really neat, but was closed. I still got a few pics of the stuff outside.
After a day of nerding out we went downtown to the capitol building. I found out there are only two states that have their replica Liberty Bell’s in storage, KS and ND. The jerks. After searching and not finding the bell we went to a barcade for supper, The Pennant. They had all of the four player arcades from the 90’s, The Simpsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and X-Men. I was impressed.
Ashley wanted to see the stadiums in Kansas City, MO since we were fairly close. We drove through the stadium parking lots and spent the night at a hotel across from them.
Right away in the morning we got a couple good pics and took off to Lincoln, NE.
We were able to find the bell in Lincoln and walked around the capitol grounds before making the eight hour drive back to Fargo.
The Nerdy Section
Arkansas Air and Military Museum
Cosmosphere
Museum Of Kansas National Guard
Combat Air Museum
