Memorial Day Weekend in Manhattan, KS…

We left the Wichita, Kansas area since the weather was predicted to be dicey for the next day and moved north and east to Manhattan, KS. The drive of 138 miles was pleasant since we spent very little time on any Interstates. We pulled into Tuttle River Cove Park, a Corps of Engineer Park just north of Manhattan.

We took site #18 which sits atop a hill (yes I said hill) despite our expectation that much of Kansas would be flat. Actually Northwestern Kansas is hilly as we are in an area known as the flint hills. The countryside is scenic and even though the lake is brown from recent flooding we are enjoying great views from our hilltop site.

  

Staying with our theme of checking out Universities we drove 10 minutes over to Kansas State University. I remember them best when Texas A&M University was in the Big 12 with and the two schools met each other for the 1998 Big 12 tournament to determine the conference champion. I was fortunate to work the on stat crew for that big game in St. Louis MO when Texas A&M’s Sirr Parker caught the winning touchdown in double overtime in the end zone with time expiring… what fun that was!

The campus is interesting in that the older buildings (late 1800’s) were all built with native limestone while the more modern buildings weren’t and are therefore much less interesting architecturally. There is a small amount of art scattered around the campus and we found some of it quite interesting.  Surprisingly for a major University there was very little art in their public spaces. The campus is undergoing a lot of construction which made it difficult to get around. It sure would be nice to see the campus when it is all completed.

The next day we decided to go and see the Konza Prairie Biological Station which is a Tall Grass Prairie managed by the Kansas State University but I want to pen another blog to talk just about that. Otherwise the only other thing we did was walk around the area known as Aggieville. Aggieville is really nothing more that a few square blocks of bars and eateries but you can certainly tell that after about 10:00 pm or on football home game weekends this place is certainly hopping.

 

We also found a nice brewery in town called Tallgrass Brewing Company where we sampled several of their beers and thought their Buffalo Oatmeal Cream Stout was their star product. Others were good but not nearly as complete as the Stout was. We leave to go to another COE park today in Perry Kansas where we plan to stay about four days, where once again we will make plans for where we will go next depending on the weather...

NOTE: We are currently at Perry Lake for four nights at a COE park in Perry, KS. We aren’t sure where we will go next but we are always watching the weather…