Where:  Mid-America Air Museum (Liberal, Kansas)
When:  December 26, 2021
Cost:  $10/person

After spending the holidays in Belleville, Kansas with my parents, we were headed south for the winter.  Of course, we had to make a few stops along the way on our multi-day drive.

Our first overnight stop was the Mid-America Air Museum in Liberal, Kansas. The museum is a Harvest Hosts venue so that is how the place got on our radar.   As a member of Harvest Hosts, we are able to dry camp at various breweries, wineries, farms, and museums for free, and are only asked to patronize the establishments in some way.   It’s a win-win for both.

Neither one of us are airplane fanatics.   We’ve taken our share of commercial flights, but that’s about it. As such, we were expecting that our visit to the museum would be a quick in-and-out.  Much to our delight, we spent over two hours in the museum marveling at the diverse array of aircraft and their lineage.   The place is home to over 100 aircraft and 80,000 square feet of exhibits!  

Among other things, Liberal was once home to a B-24 Liberator pilot training base during World War II.  In the 1970s, Beechcraft manufactured general aviation aircraft there, where the company built planes such as the Baron, Duchess, Musketeer and Sundowner. In 1987, a group of locals founded the museum, thanks to a donation by the late Colonel Tom Thomas, Jr., who donated his personal collection of over 50 planes to the museum.

Near the front of the museum, there is a big display about a 1941 Cessna Airmaster C-165 donated by native Kansan and former Cessna CEO Dwane Wallace. Yet, EACH aircraft contains a placard giving the history of the airplane and usually showing photos of it in use.  Most of these placards were written by a local college student, Nathan Dowell, and he deserves a big THANK YOU for such detailed research.  The aircraft range from experimental, military, home-built, single engine, and agricultural airplanes, as well as hang gliders, helicopters, hot air balloons.  There’s also an interactive area.  You can learn about things like Bernoulli's principle in air lift and even hop in a few cock-pits! 

In addition to the planes, museum contains:

• A beam recovered from the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

• An exhibit on Liberal native, Larry D. Welch, a four-star general who was the twelfth Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. 

• A room showing how the air base barracks would have looked back in 1944 during World War II.

If you are in the Liberal area, consider stopping by the Mid-America Air Museum.  We loved it.  Job well done.  Or “Props!” as they like to say.