Wheat State Whirlwind Tour

New faculty, staff travel the state during annual initiation

On the Dodge City Community College campus.

“We went to Logan County, near the banks of the Smoky Hill
Saw the buffalo roam in their prairie home, I wish I was there still
There was another herd in that pasture, wild and full of fleas
They're hard to hold and can't be controlled, 'cause they all have advanced degrees”

Don Steeples, Jim McCauley, George Wilson (left to right) in downtown Fort Scott.

So inspired by the Wheat State Whirlwind tour was Jim  McCauley, Kansas Geological Survey associate scientist, that he altered the lyrics of "Miles and Miles of Texas" into an ode to Kansas’ long winding roads and the annual statewide trek by KU faculty.

About 40 faculty and professional staff members followed a 1,500 mile counter-clockwise route across the state for a week in May. Chancellor Robert Hemenway initiated the tour in 1997 as a way to introduce faculty new to Kansas to the people and terrain of their new home state.

KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway meets Gwen Brooks and husband Fredric, j'50, among Dodge City KU Alumni at Casey's Cowtown Club.

Highlights this year included the tour's first visit to Manhattan and Kansas State University, where K-State President Jon Wefald served his guests purple ice cream.

Other stops included farm machinery and axle trailer manufacturer Landoll Corp. in Marysville, the site of a World  War II prisoner of war camp and the future site of the National Orphan Train complex both at Concordia, a state fish hatchery in Pratt,  a retired teacher’s  science museum in St. John, and the Kansas Sampler Foundation in  Inman.

KU's tour group meets and eats with the Dodge City KU Alumni group at Casey's Cowtown Club.

As in previous years, faculty roamed with the buffalo at the Duff ranch in Logan County, climbed aboard a combine at a wheat farm in Palco, northwest  of Hays, and explored the Grass Roots Art Center in Lucas.

To view photographs from previous years' tours, daily itineraries and maps of this year's route, visit the Wheat State Whirlwind Web site at www.wheatstate.ku.edu/.