Andover, KS Outdoor Activities

Paintballers belly crawl through tall grasses and weeds as their opponents hunker behind fence posts, sandbags, and trees. Within wooden structures teammates strategize and hatch plans of attack before flanking the other team and firing off kaleidoscopic-like rounds of eco-friendly paintballs.

Traversing 54 acres comprising six woodsball courses and two speedball fields, players at The Edge Paintball Adventures navigate varying terrain, including a stream bordered by long stalks of golden grass and overgrown, tree-bordered fields full of thistle, shrubs, and dandelions gone to seed. A staff of trained referees maintain order on themed courses such as Assassin's Alley, where snipers lay in wait or Firebase Bravo, which sports a mammoth bunker that encourages use of paint grenades.

The animal-loving owners of Tanganyika Wildlife Park know that in order to save endangered animals, humans must feel a strong connection to them. It is the park’s mission to foster this connection by putting visitors in close contact with its rare animals. Visitors can gaze at cheetahs and red pandas and feed reticulated giraffes and African spur-thighed tortoises, which are best known for their role in slow-motion Westerns. The park also safeguards endangered animals from extinction by breeding species such as clouded leopards and amur leopards.

Though they've only been a member the American Association since 2008, the Wichita Wingnuts have been one of the most consistent programs in the league. Following some fine-tuning after their first season, the team has posted a winning record every year since 2009, reaching the playoffs three times in five campaigns. The Wingnuts play their home games at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, which hosted the National Baseball Congress World Series in 1935 and is still going on due to an umpire's filibuster.

Vibrant hardwoods envelop the lush fairways of Fox Ridge Golf Club's nine-hole course as they stretch across 3,174 yards of scenic, secluded terrain. The horticultural haven encircles a central stream, which comes into play on four holes and houses a sophisticated underwater civilization that uses golf balls as currency. Rounds end in dramatic fashion at the ninth hole—a 498-yard par 5 that doglegs slightly left and contains the widest segment of the intervening river, forcing spiky-shoed adventurers to make cerebral course-management decisions. Head golf pro Mike Riffel guides greenhorns on their path to green jackets with a variety of golf lessons. The Club keeps tour-level hunger at bay with Fox Ridge Restaurant, which serves an eclectic menu including steaks, burgers, pastas, sandwiches, and salads that can be made to order and foraged entirely from recovered divots.

To step back in time to when the cedars, oaks, and pines around Wellington Golf Club were first groomed and pared away to make room for fairways and greens would be to see a landscape at once familiar and different. The year was 1919, and the sounds of cattlemen driving herds up the Chisholm Trail would ring through the air, accompanying the sights of a town not 50 years old. Yet that early course's modesty would be recognizable—and very much part of the draw.

The designers kept much of the surrounding growth intact, forcing players to thread their tee shots down somewhat narrow fairways to span the 6,201 yards. This emphasis on accuracy soaks through to the rest of the course as well. The relatively small greens' fast bent grass demands deft iron play and a soft putting touch. And getting there through variable gusts is half the challenge. But Wellington Golf Club doesn't leave its clubbers stranded in that regard—a driving range holds tees at both ends so that drivers can calibrate to different wind directions without relying on their protractors and trajectory calculations.

Course at a Glance:

• 18-hole, par 70 course
• Total length of 6,201 yards from the back tees
• Three sets of tees per hole
• Scorecard