Liberal Kansas is situated on US 54 in the south west of Kansas, just over the border from Oklahoma. There is little reason to be on this route unless you happen to want to get from I 40 to I 70 on the diagonal. This is how we happened to be on this road. Carol was reading the paper map and noticed that alongside Liberal there was a notation “Dorothy’s House” in Kansas there could only be one Dorothy! A call confirmed that they would be open when we got there and that we could park the motorhome on the street in front of the house. In 1982 the Kansas governor was convinced to declare Dorothy Gale a resident of Liberal, Kansas and to declare that this was the one and only location of her home.
A resident donated his house, which is the exact floor plan of the house in the movie, to the County Museum and it was furnished precisely as in the movie. Tours are usually lead by local high school girls dressed as Dorothy. We happened to arrive when there were no girls present, but a staff person who does their training gave us the tour which, after touring the house, follows the Yellow Brick Road into a large structure in which the entire Yellow Brick Road is laid out with all of the major scenes in the movie characterized. It was a hoot!
It was now 5 PM and we needed a place to stay the night and there was another attraction to see, The Mid America Air Museum located on the site of the former Beech Aircraft Manufacturing facility. We had called earlier and been told we were welcome to park in their lot overnight and tour in the morning. We backtracked 2 miles on US 54 – here named The Yellow Brick Road and Pancake Way (a tale for another time) and followed signs for the museum into their lot. We parked near the fence between the lot and the flight line. There is a collection of old Jet War Birds out there and just beyond is an active runway. Since we have stayed at Dockweiler RV park a few take offs and landings by small aircraft were hardly noticeable. More noticeable was a rail line with several grade crossings in ear shot.
For those into aviation history this museum is a delight with planes ranging back into the ‘30’s and earlier arrayed with some more modern aircraft and just enough WW II War Birds to attract some of us. The NASA display is minimal and disappointing, but that is not what this about. I was enthralled with the WW II era Link Trainer and the B 24 and the equipment used to train mechanics on the repair and maintenance of those fabulous bombers. There is also a complete Norden Bombsite on display. Carol enjoyed the exhibit even though she is not quite as aviation crazed as I am. It was a chilly morning and the hanger which houses the display is not heated so eventually the chill got to us and we retreated to the gift shop and found ourselves in conversation with the staff people who were very warm and welcoming. While we were there we saw two school groups that arrived on one bus being toured through the museum. Other than that we saw no other tourists.
We left something for another visit to Liberal. They claim to be pancake crazed, but we chose to move one without sampling their pancakes as we had had breakfast it was not quite time for lunch.