Fort Larned & Tallgrass Prairie
Driving from Clayton, NM to Iowa | Fort Larned National Historic Site | Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve | January 2026
After almost 10 weeks of being on the road out West, it was time to make our way back to the Midwest so Curtis could start his spring work season. Our last few days of the trip would mostly consist of driving straight across the plains, getting a few new counties, and visiting a few National Park administered sites that we had been to before. We were quite fortunate in that the forecast looked ideal for a January road trip through this part of the country, though our drive didn’t come without a little drama.
We left the rest area and drove to Clayton, NM where we got the cheapest gas we’d seen throughout this entire trip, including what was to come. Then we continued on our planned route on US-64, which included briefly pulling over to ‘enter’ the Northwestern corner of Texas, then cut across the Oklahoma panhandle, took US-385 North into Colorado, and finally took US-160 East into Kansas, which is how we were able to visit 5 states before noon today, and brought our total for the year to 8 states visited. Once in Kansas, we took 160 to US-56, then went North on US-283, and were able to claim two new counties from this route. As ‘boring’ as driving across Kansas may seem, it’s honestly one of our favorite states to cut across when driving between the Midwest and Southwest. So much of it is made up of flat, easy driving on empty highways, with big skies and wide open views. But that’s not to say our drive was uneventful.
Over time, we’ve noticed one of the bars on our MaxxAir fan wearing out, and that in windy conditions it makes a lot of noise. (The fan is on the roof in the center of the van, and we use it either as a vent when I’m cooking or for cool air when it’s hot.) After a while, we figured out that the previous owner who installed it put it on backwards, but we didn’t do anything to rectify that. And today, while crossing paths with a semi on an otherwise lonely but windy Kansas highway, the cover of the fan blew right off and landed in the ditch, cracked in multiple places. We were so glad no one was behind us and felt terrible now that we realized we were driving around with that posed as a risk! Curtis found a place to pull over, then went and retrieved the pieces of the fan. It couldn’t be fixed, all we could do was make sure what was left was safe and secure, and then we had to live with basically a permanent skylight for the rest of our trip. I guess if it had to happen, we’re lucky it waited until we were this close to the end of the trip, and that it happened after all the snow and below freezing temps!
Since all we could really do about it was order a replacement to be sent to my parent’s house, we carried on with the plans we made and tried to end this trip on a positive note. For our activity of today, we returned to Fort Larned National Historic Site. Our last visit was in December of 2023, on a cold and extremely foggy day, where we couldn’t see halfway across the fort. Today was clear, sunny, and warm; better than we could ask for for January in Kansas! We walked around the fort, and took our time walking through the museum. The ranger offered to play the park film for us, which we learned is the oldest film that’s still being played in any of the national park sites, made in the 70s, only a few years after the fort became a national historic site.
After our visit, we continued driving another hour or two to Lyons, taking the scenic route through Quivira NWR, claiming another two new counties. We made it to a rest area West of Lyons just after sunset where we spent the night — thankfully it didn’t even drop below freezing that night, so we weren’t too cold with our new skylight!
The next day was our last full day on the road. We had a late start because Curtis had a meeting that took a few hours, but we finally got back on the road and made our way East. We made it to our one activity of the day, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, right around noon. After lunch in the van, we set off on the Scenic Overlook trail. We have very fond memories of visiting this park in March of 2021, and reminisced on that warm Kansas camping trip throughout our visit here. We weren’t able to walk the entirety of this trail today because we still had several hours left of driving, but we still enjoyed scenic views in every direction of the vast prairie. Unfortunately we had failed to look beforehand, and didn’t realize until we arrived that the visitor center was closed for today due to reduced winter hours, so we weren’t able to get our park stamps.
Charlotte in Tallgrass Prairie, March 2021
Finally, we got back on the road to finish up today’s drive. While there were a few lakes in Kansas that we could have stayed at that would have reduced our driving time, much of the area was expected to have rain throughout the night, which was bad news for the hole in our roof. We made it around Kansas City and into Missouri, then took I-29 North. The place where we planned to spend the night was supposed to be dry all night, but we did have to drive through some rain to get there. I was gritting my teeth the entire time, praying the rain would stop and that not much would get in, and thankfully when we arrived we couldn’t find any trace of moisture inside. We ended up getting to our spot well past dark, but that was fine because we were familiar with it — we had stayed here, at Lake Paho, on the first night of our 2024 Southwestern migration. The campground was open but empty, so we claimed our spot and settled in for our last night in the van for a while. It was dry and not too cold that night, and we slept well here.
On our last day, we only had 4 hours to drive to make it back to my parent’s home. It was a good thing we were ending it all now, as winter was returning with force after a brief reprieve. We finished up the drive and made it safely back, happy to be reunited with family and to have successfully pulled off this ten week trip!
