Arriving at Hays Regional Airport in Hays puts regional highlights within easy reach, from chalk-rock badlands to the limestone churches of the Volga Germans. Hays is the biggest town for a long way in any direction on I-70, a college community with a cowboy past: Wild Bill Hickok was briefly sheriff here. Today it is friendly, walkable, and prouder of its German-Russian roots than you might expect from the middle of Kansas.

Standout experiences around Hays: - See the fish-within-a-fish fossil at Fort Hays State University's Sternberg Museum of Natural History - Walk the original limestone blockhouse and guardhouse at the Fort Hays State Historic Site - Spend an evening among the Chestnut Street District's brick storefronts, pubs, and patios - Stand under the twin spires of St. Fidelis, the Cathedral of the Plains, in nearby Victoria - Try a bierock, the meat-and-cabbage bun the Volga Germans brought with them - Celebrate Oktoberfest in Hays with polka, sausage, and the Fort Hays State homecoming crowd - Paddle or fish at Cedar Bluff State Park on the Smoky Hill River

Hays also makes a good base for the odd and ancient landscapes of western Kansas. Wilson Lake and the Czech-flavored town of Wilson sit about an hour east, while Monument Rocks, the chalk pyramids rising from the prairie, and Castle Rock lie an hour or so to the southwest. Nicodemus National Historic Site, a town founded by formerly enslaved settlers in 1877, is an hour north. Sunsets out here go on forever, and Hays is the kind of place where someone will gladly tell you where to watch the best one.