The prairie is the local country, and it is genuinely rare
Kansas is farmland almost everywhere, which is exactly why the Flint Hills matter: the ground there is too thin and rocky to plow, so the tallgrass prairie survived. The National Park Service puts what remains at under four percent of the roughly 170 million acres that once covered North America, and the Flint Hills, running north to south through eastern Kansas, hold the bulk of that remainder.
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve at Strong City is about 78 miles from Wichita, an hour and a half on I-35 and K-177, and protects nearly 11,000 acres and a bison herd. Two things to know before you point a van at it. First, you cannot sleep there: the preserve authorizes no camping and no overnight parking, and its trails are foot access only, closed to bicycles and private vehicles. Second, the grass is not tall in spring. It stands a few inches then and peaks in late September and October.
The road is as much the point as the destination. The Flint Hills National Scenic Byway is 47 miles of K-177 running from I-35 at Cassoday north to US-56 at Council Grove, straight past the preserve. Farther north, Konza Prairie covers 8,616 acres six miles south of Manhattan, roughly 131 miles and two and a quarter hours from Wichita. It is a Kansas State University and Nature Conservancy research station with three loop trails of about 2.6, 4.5 and 6 miles and a herd of around 200 bison. Day hiking only, no camping. For somewhere you can actually sleep, the reservoirs are the answer, both the state parks and the Army Corps lakefront campgrounds that sit on the same water.
Camping here means reservoirs, and two booking systems
Most Kansas state parks are built around reservoirs, so the shorelines are where the hookups are. The closest is Cheney State Park, 20 miles west of the city on Cheney Reservoir, with 223 electric sites with water plus more than 400 primitive spots. The Ninnescah Sailing Association keeps its facility on the west shore, which tells you something about how reliably it blows out there. El Dorado State Park sits 30 miles east-northeast on US-54 or K-254 and is far larger, with around 1,100 campsites.
If you want scenery that does not look like the Kansas in your head, drive to Kanopolis State Park, southwest of Salina just off I-70: sandstone canyons, a prairie dog town, yucca, and more than 25 miles of trail through Horsethief Canyon.
Wind, storms and spring smoke
Wind is the thing that surprises people driving a high-sided vehicle here. Wichita averages around 13 mph and there is no terrain to break it, so a day of steady crosswind on an open highway is tiring in a way that flat, easy miles have no right to be. Plan shorter driving days than the mileage suggests.
Severe weather is seasonal and worth planning around rather than fearing. Spring also brings smoke: Flint Hills ranchers burn their pastures annually to renew the grass, and Kansas regulates open burning during April across a 16-county belt that includes Sedgwick County, where Wichita sits, specifically to manage the resulting air quality. Prairie and grassland management burns are what stay permitted. The preserve closes its trails during prescribed fire.
The real trip from Wichita is west
Be honest about the geography. Most of what you would rent a van to see is a long way from here, and the drive west is the one that pays off. US-400 leaves Wichita and runs through Kingman, Pratt and Greensburg to Dodge City, 151 miles out, where it joins US-50 and stays with it to the Colorado line. It is close to a single road with almost no decisions in it. Colorado Springs is roughly 470 road miles and something like eight and a half hours, so treat the Front Range as a full day of driving with a night in western Kansas or eastern Colorado, not a weekend hop.
Heading southwest toward Santa Fe, Cimarron National Grassland is 108,175 Forest Service acres in Morton County near the Colorado border, with a campground at the Cimarron Recreation Area and 23 miles of the Santa Fe National Historic Trail crossing it, wagon ruts still visible. Closer to home, the Red Hills of Barber, Comanche and Clark counties southwest of Wichita are red sediment, small canyons and sinkholes, Big Basin and Little Basin among them.
Going the other way matters for a different reason. I-35 northeast toward Emporia and Kansas City is the Kansas Turnpike, 236 miles of toll road that has been fully electronic since 2024, with no cash booths left. Without a K-TAG transponder, tolls are billed by license plate to the registered owner, which on a rental is the rental company. Ask how they pass that through before you drive it.
Picking the van up
Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (ICT) is about seven miles west of downtown and has a consolidated rental car facility with counters and a covered return garage. Campervans generally are not on those counters, so confirm the handover point with whoever you book from. How one-way RV rentals work depends entirely on the individual operator, so check before you plan a route that does not come back to Wichita.