Day 3 - Southwest National Parks Adventure

9/26/2025

With the time change, we were up early and arrived at our first stop, the Brown vs the Board of Education Historic site in Topeka, Kansasat about 10:30a.m. The museum is in the school the plaintiffs attended and was very interesting. The school was nice and demonstrated how some city’s attempted to make the extremely flawed philosophy of separate but equal seem plausible, or even fair. We both learned something new. For example, unlike in the Deep South, segregation in Kansas was partial, elementary schools in the city’s were segregated, but high schools and rural schools were not. Also, dolls, i.e. toy baby dolls, played a roll in this landmark Supreme Court decision (I’ll let you google it).

The bike trail we planned to ride was near the historic site, so after touring the school, we set out on the Landon Trail and the Shunga Trail. We headed south from the school and enjoyed a great ride. The paved paths parallel the Shunganunga Creek. We rode 5 miles out (10 total). We passed neighborhood parks, with playgrounds and ball fields. Rode through a nature preserve and a disc golf course. Most of the trail was among trees which was nice because the weather was sunny and warm. Was the scenery as grand as yesterday’s ride by the great Missouri River, maybe not, but we enjoyed it just as much. Kudos to Topeka for having a wonderful system of trails that were well marked and maintained.

The afternoon was spent driving. The southwest is a long, long way away. We drove part of the Native Stones Scenic Byway and stopped at the historical marker that explained the history of the stone walls, but the number of walls didn’t really justify an entire scenic byway.

After dinner at Burger King in Great Bend, Kansas we drove into the setting sun. We stopped at Fort Larned National Historic Site to enjoy the sunset and stretch our legs.

A sliver of orange moon set a couple hours later,around 10:00 pm, We’re camping at the Hampton Lake Fishing Area in Syracuse, Kansas.