Wallace County isn’t woke enough to be considered a possible relocation point for Florida’s Disney World theme park should Disney’s rift with Florida legislators grow, but the home of Mount Sunflower is still our top pick for the 2022 Kansas Red County Vacation mecca.
There are lots of Kansas hot spots waiting for you this summer – so grab a Google map and prepare to hit the red road.
Indeed Wallace County, the 1,600 population conservative bastion out on the way, way western border of Kansas gets this year’s pick for the same reason it won last year – for valiantly holding Joe Biden to a paltry 44 votes in the 2020 election and for notching the lowest electorate percentage for the Mumbler in Chief (5.7%) of any county in the God fearing, gun toting, sunrise loving, Sunflower State.
Wallace County, we salute you. Your devotion to good government makes you leader of the pack among the Kansas Red County Vacation spots we’re endorsing for the upcoming 2022 vacation season.
Just like a broader vacation opportunity brings into focus the importance of red states supporting red states this time of year, it’s important that Kansas’ red counties support our conservative brethren within our own intrastate conserative landscapes. And with Bidenflation racking our family budgets this year, we’re all no doubt looking for a closer – and cheaper – option for vacation 2022.
Kansas conservatives forget that we’re blessed to be able to travel to 100 of the state’s 105 counties to spend our daycation or full-on vacation dollars without putting money in the pockets of people who look at us as the ideological and cultural equivalent of bad clams.
Wonderful bed and breakfasts, interesting historic sites, cool natural features and just plain entertaining characters are out there waiting to greet you – and they all live in places where the majority of the residents vote like you do.
Forget the Kamikazee traffic and Abercrombie envy of Johnson County; the pink hair and fishhook facial piercing charm of Lawrence; or the other dyed-in-blue locales of Shawnee, Wyandotte or Riley counties. You can take a day trip or even longer excursion this summer to red voting counties in Kansas where the residents believe wholeheartedly and unabashedly in the preservation of our republic. Indeed, there are places not too far from you that offer awesome rural scenery, some local unique and interesting points of interest, a chicken fried steak dinner for less than $8 and nary a glimpse of a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker for miles and miles.
Wallace County itself boasts Mount Sunflower – the single highest point of elevation in all of Kansas. There’s also the Fort Wallace Museum, denoting “the Fightingest Fort In The West,” and exhibits of Custer’s 7th Cavalry, barbwire folk art and Fox Still’s artwork featuring that big giant T-Rex. Wallace voted 93 percent Republican in 2020.
Scott County came through nearly 86 percent red in 2020. They’ve got Battle Canyon – the site of the last Indian battle in the state; there’s also Duff’s Buffalo Ranch and Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park and Monument Rocks. Scott County is steeped in Kansas history and nature – and steeped in Kansas Red as well.
Kiowa County boasts the tornado-hammered-then-reborn City of Greensburg and an 84 percent Republican turnout for president in 2020, along with the world’s largest hand-dug well, the Twilight Theater and the Silo Eco Home Bed & Breakfast. Don’t forget Hamilton County, another way-way-way out there conservative Nirvana in Western Kansas, with the amazing sand dunes around Syracuse and their spectacular 81 percent red voting record.
There’s ultra cool Sun City in Barber County (86 percent red) where there’s an old bank turned into a pheasant hunting resort hotel and an awesome saloon next door with the meanest waitress west of K81; or the Concordia World War II POW camp in Cloud County (76 percent red) or Coronado Heights Castle west of Lindsborg in McPherson County (69 percent red) or Kansas’ piece de resistance – Cawker City’s World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Mitchell County (80 percent).
Indeed, Kansas’ cornucopia of vacation conservatism lays itself out before you – what are you waiting for?
Dane Hicks is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School at Quantico, VA. He is the author of novels "The Skinning Tree" and "A Whisper For Help." As publisher of the Anderson County Review in Garnett, KS., he is a recipient of the Kansas Press Association's Boyd Community Service Award as well as more than 60 awards for excellence in news, editorial and photography.
