Getting the flavor of...Kansas’s tallgrass prairie

Kansas’s tallgrass prairie

Returning to my native Kansas recently, I was worried about “how far from my cowgirl roots I’d strayed,” said Annie Gowen in The Washington Post. Tornado warnings greeted my plane’s arrival in Kansas City, and I spent the whole drive to the historic town of Council Grove with eyes glued to “the ominous rose-and-gray sky.” At Hays House, the longest continually operated restaurant west of the Mississippi, I expected a better steak. But I’d come mostly to see the land, so my friend and I were soon off to the 11,000-acre Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. “The place had a serene, understated beauty about it” that grounded me again. As meadowlarks sang, we glimpsed the preserve’s tiny bison herd in the distance. That evening, we attended the Symphony in the Flint Hills—a concert held every June on the nearby prairie. Ranch hands were still working the cattle on a nearby ridge as the sun settled behind them and the orchestra played Aaron Copland.

The world’s largest library

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The Library of Congress is not an “obvious destination for kids,” but it can make for a fun afternoon, said Keith Bellows in National Geographic Traveler. To get the most out of this underappreciated Washington, D.C., complex, “transform a visit into a treasure hunt and knowledge quest,” using the library’s kid-friendly displays. “The library houses its share of quirky material,” so have everybody find Alexander Graham Bell’s first drawing of the telephone or the library’s first-edition Barbie doll. New interactive kiosks let visitors use touch screens to flip through the pages of George Washington’s copy of the U.S. Constitution or to decipher Mayan hieroglyphs. You can also wow your group by ushering them into the Main Reading Room, “the heart of the library.” It’s best viewed from the open second level, “which surveys the book-filled floor below and the gilded dome towering 160 feet above.” Honestly, it’s “hard to imagine a child not awestruck by the majesty of the place.”