Don't let a tight budget be your excuse for staying home. These fun attractions, exhibits, and festivals will leave your wallet unscathed.

Traveling on a budget? Check out this great list of 50 Free Summer Activities in Every State from MSN.com. 

Thanks to everyone who attended our 

Tourism After Hours Celebration! J oin us in 

congratulating the Abilene CVB's tourism 

award winners:

Trails, Rails, and Tales - 150th Anniversary of the Chisholm Trail - Outstanding Celebration

Abilene & Smoky Valley Railroad volunteers - Tourism Champions

From the Dickinson County Heritage Center:

Heroes on the Horse returns this week with Cheri Knight-Kinch. She is the granddaughter of Tom Knight who owned and operated our C.W. Parker carousel from 1959 -1969. Knight loved to spoil his grandchildren, and this carousel was the ultimate gift for them. Cheri's earliest memories were riding on the historic treasure. Knight would run the carousel with the steam engine and never charged anyone to ride. Knight set up his own mini-Parker carnival at his Knight drive-in theatre in Riverton, Wyoming. Cheri and her husband, Chuck Kinch from Plano, Texas visited us on Monday. Cheri had not seen this carousel since her granddad operated it, and the ride was able to spark some great childhood memories.

Join Holm Automotive Center for a fun-filled day celebrating their 35th Anniversary!

Schedule of Events:
4:00 p.m. - Activities & Food Vendors, Campus Grounds
5:00 p.m. - Mounted Color Guard Demonstration, Campus Grounds
5:30 p.m. - Everyday Lights Concert, Main Stage
5:30 p.m. - KWU Music Camp Recital, Visitors Center Auditorium
7:00 p.m. - 1st Infantry Division Band Concert, Main Stage
8:00 p.m. - Mounted Color Guard Demonstration, Campus Grounds
8:30 p.m. - Salina Symphony Concert, Main Stage

Commemorate the anniversary of D-Day at this annual outdoor concert held on the grounds of the Eisenhower Presidential Library. The concert will feature patriotic favorites as well as popular classics. Tatiana Tessman, piano, and Trevor Duell, trumpet, will be the featured soloists.

Sometimes you just have to get away. Maybe as a couple, family or just some friends needing to unplug and reconnect. What's your favorite destination in Kansas to take a weekend getaway?

Voting has begun, you can vote daily through March 16 and May 31. Winning "Weekend Getaways" will be announced in the winter 2018 issue.

Readers' Choice Guidelines

From ASVRR volunteer and K-State professor, Steve Smethers:

When the railroad decided to upgrade its coaches to steel construction in the late 1920s, executives initially scheduled car 254 to be scrapped and salvaged. But resourceful railroad executives had an idea that saved this vintage piece of rolling stock. The Katy was spending a considerable amount of money on track maintenance, and one of those costs entailed housing maintenance crews in hotels. Executives theorized that converting this wooden day coach into a "bunkhouse on wheels" would save the railroad thousands. So craftsmen replaced seats with bunk beds enabling the Katy to to house its construction and maintenance crews on location. And to feed those hungry workers, a kitchen was installed at the front of the car.

The MKT finally removed this antiquated car from service in the late 1950s. It was acquired by a private collector and then later donated it to a railroad museum in Belton, Missouri, where it sat on the grounds as part of an exhibit featuring vintage wooden cars. Officials of the newly formed Abilene and Smoky Valley Association heard about Katy car 254 and purchased the coach in 1996 and moved it to Abilene by truck. The car was in poor condition and needed a major remodeling job if it was to be of any use to the new excursion railroad's mission. A major fundraising effort ensued and volunteers launched a demanding restoration effort, where tables and benches for seating passengers or dinner train customers were installed, as well as wall paneling, lighting, curtains on the windows and a sound system. Car 254 was thus given new life on the A&SV and remains one of a handful of wooden cars still in use in the entire country.

Over the past few seasons, it was becoming obvious to A&SV officials that its prized possession urgently needed some repairs. Window frames, as well as some of the car's exterior wood, had begun to rot. The car's deteriorating condition was so severe that railroad management decided to take the car out of service for the 2018 season, allowing volunteer restoration workers to strip away the rotting wood, rebuild the windows and thoroughly inspect the condition of the car's wood and iron frame. Pictured here is the craftsmanship that the Katy's construction engineers once used to fortify the wooden structure's frame, allowing the car to withstand the immense wear and tear of daily jostling as it moved across thousands of miles of track as a passenger carrier and later as a maintenance car. The restoration process has uncovered another chapter in the car's history: Restoration workers, in stripping away the exterior, discovered a significant amount of charred wood in the present-day kitchen area of the car, indicating that the cumbersome wood-fired Army cook stove had at one time actually set the car on fire, which evidence suggests had burned a significant portion of the kitchen before the blaze was extinguished.

So this season, while the wooden coach gets some much needed tender loving care, passengers are riding in a vintage 1940s lounge and dining car that once belonged to the Chicago Northwestern railroad, which the A&SV acquired through a donation from a private collector in 2005.

Trains leave Abilene's historic Rock Island Depot at 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. on Saturdays and at 2:00 on Sundays. Beginning on Wednesday, May 30, A&SV trains will also begin weekday Wednesday thru Friday excursions. For ticket information:  www.asvrr.org

*Update*

Due to high demand of our first Basics of Blacksmith class, we are opening up a second date filling up fast. Join us on Tuesday, June 5 at 6 pm at the Dickinson County Heritage Center. Ages 16 and up, $50 for registration. To register, call 785-263-2681 or email heritagecenterdk@sbcglobal.net

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The Dickinson County  Heritage Center is hosting its first Blacksmith Class on Saturday, May 19, at 8 a.m. Learn how to heat steel in a forge and shape it with a hammer, anvil and chisel. The Heritage blacksmithing courses teach smithing operations such as drawing, shrinking, bending, upsetting and punching, so you can make pieces of your own. 

Advanced classes will follow.

For registration and more information, contact the Heritage Center at 785-263-2681. The class is $50 for registration, iron donated by Salina Iron & Steel. Ages 16 and up.

Ginger, resident Greyhound at the  Greyhound Hall of Fame Museum , loves greeting visitors of all ages! 

Greyhound Hall of Fame Museum

Open daily 9:00 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.

Free admission

• Symphony & Sunset @ Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home - Eisenhower Presidential Library lawn - June 2
• Camelot @ Great Plains Theatre - June 8-10, 12-17
• Independence Day Celebration - July 4
• The Lion in Winter @ Great Plains Theatre - July 13-15, 17-22
• Central Kansas Free Fair - August 1-6
• Wild Bill Hickok Rodeo - August 2-4
• National Cowboy Poetry Rodeo - August 2-4
• Shrek the Musical @ Great Plains Theatre - August 10-12, 14-19
• Not Another Christmas Letter @ Great Plains Theatre - November 30-December 2, 4-9