Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me offer up a possible
MO-KAN destination / activity for September. It will be over the Labor Day weekend, September 5-6 and it will involve rockets...
Perhaps you've seen the Discovery Channel's show on amateur rocketry
Rocket Challenge, featuring "civilian made" rockets that go up, put out a parachute and land nice and easy. I'm not talking about (no offense) little, dinky, hobby-store rockets, I'm talking REAL rockets, with REAL rocket motors that put out hundreds, even thousands of pounds of thrust, that break the sound barrier and go thousands, sometimes TENS of thousands of feet! They are 5, 10, 20 or even 30 feet tall. They have onboard altimeters, trackers and video cameras. They must have FAA clearance to launch, since the rockets go into commercial airspace. And they're REALLY,
REALLY LOUD! 
The club and launch-site where that show was taped is where I fly MY rockets. Each Labor Day, our club (Kloudbusters) hosts the largest regional launch in the Midwest. It's called Airfest, and YOU'RE INVITED!
A . I . R . F e s t 1 5
While the launch is a 4-day affair, I would suggest just making it an overnight. You could drive to the launch site near Argonia Kansas (about an hour SW of Wichita) on Saturday morning, arriving noonish. There will be plenty of interesting launches, some monster rockets, some that are so fast you literally won't be able to see them take off, and plenty of um, *colorful* characters to watch and chat with! Saturday night there is a Burger-Blast cookout.
Saturday night, you could stay in one of the local motels (see link for contact info and rates, they're close and cheap). On Sunday, launches will resume at 9 and will continue til 6. You could stay as long as you like, but if you departed noonish, you would arrive back in the KC area around 4.
The drive is easy, I-35 south to Wellington (about 30 miles past Wichita), then HWY 160 west to Argonia (about 20 miles). The launch site is about 7 miles south of town. Mapquest says it's 3 hours from 119th and I-35 to Wellington, and about 35 minutes from Wellington to the launch site.
I will be there, but not in my smart: my rockets won't fit in Gromit! The launch will have perhaps a hundred flyers from across the country launching several hundred rockets. There will be on-site vendors for food and drinks, porta-potties and a big circus-tent for shade. It is safe and very family-friendly. Watching is completely free. If you want the dinner Saturday night, it's a staggering $5.
I encourage you to surf the link and Kloudbuster's site as well.
K.L.O.U.D. Busters - Kansas High Power Rocketry
This IS a bit of a drive, but if you like smoke and flame and high-power action, this just might appeal to you! Anyone interested?
), 
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