A Road Trip Through This Wildly Underrated Flyover State Offers Secret Canyons And Historic Towns Galore

When you grow up in landlocked Green Country, Oklahoma (as I did), road trips within a five or six-hour can yield some of the best vacations. And as a lifelong Okie, one state I've fallen in love with time and again is our northern neighbor, Kansas. A plains state where the summer countryside is a wonderland of tall grass and wildflowers and frontier towns once dotted the map, Kansas has a spirit like nowhere else in the nation, a spirit where agriculture, resilience, community, and counterculture reside harmoniously.

Every Kansan city and town has its own unique energy. I've spent many a night dancing to local bands in Lawrence's thriving arts and music scene and many an afternoon road tripping through the gorgeous countryside on a quest for artisan goods and flea market finds. For my family, the best Kansas road trips also include a handful of whimsical stops, and Kansas has plenty to choose from, including quirky roadside America destinations like the Oz Museum, Lindsborg aka "Little Sweden," and the folk art hotbed town of Lucas. 

Long overlooked as just another flyover state, Kansas boasts a wealth of natural beauty and loads of roadside hidden gems — not to mention some of the best barbecue in the country. From one of the country's last remaining tallgrass prairies to charming roadside towns with famous pancakes, the entire state is a credit to America's heartland. 

I've camped all across the United States, from the mountains of Colorado to the bays of New England, and the Kansan countryside is still one of my favorite places to pitch a tent. In the summer months, the state's many watering holes are a perfect temperature for swimming or boating. The Sunflower State's sprawling horizons make for breathtaking technicolor sunsets where opalescent colors put on a light show that rivals anything I've ever seen. 

It's also so much more than just corn fields and cows. Situated in the state's northwest corner (not far from the Western Vistas Historic Byway), you'll find what once was a vast inland sea that divided the continent in half about 34 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, a sea stretching all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. Today, what remains are the Monument Rocks, an otherworldly landscape of chalk pillars, arches, and monoliths that stand up to 70 feet tall like alien monuments watching over the land.

Just a short drive away, you'll find Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park, a prairie nature preserve where the chalk bluffs and outcroppings provide a habitat for prairie flora and fauna like wild buckwheat, cliff swallows, ferruginous hawks, and rock wrens. And if you're in the market for wildlife or wildflowers, you don't have to look far in Kansas. The Kansas countryside is replete with scenic byways such as Gypsum Hills and preserves and parks like the Konza Prairie Biological Station and Shawnee Mission Park. The state is even home to one of the country's most beautiful waterfalls, conveniently close to a lake with free campsites. 

Travelers eager to check out the Wheat State's historic grounds will find their work cut out for them, given the lengthy list of frontier trails and historic sites in Kansas. Take, for example, Flint Hills Trail in East-Central Kansas. Stretching 118 miles long through five counties, the now-defunct Missouri Pacific Railroad railway corridor largely follows the historic Santa Fe National Historic Trail that once carried wagon trains across the Kansas countryside to the great American frontier. The route connects to the coast-to-coast trail route the American Discovery Trai,l and travels past dozens of historic sites and natural wonders like an 1849 pioneer jail, a 19th-century Sac and Fox Indian lookout, the Quenemo Wetlands, the Allegawaho (Kaw) Heritage Park, Jesse James Cave, scenic rail bridges, and several other 19th-century buildings. 

Travel back up northwest near Scott City to visit the site of the Battle of Punished Woman's Fork, a battle between the United States government and the Cheyenne that took place after a group of Cheyenne left their El Reno, Oklahoma reservation to reclaim their home in the Northern Great Plains. Or take a trip down the Frontier Military Scenic Byway, which passes through a historic Civil War site.