Tomahawk Creek Trail in Overland Park, KS

Today we accessed the Tomahawk Creek Trail from a parking lot just west of 69 Highway off 135^th Street on Hemlock (turn south on Hemlock between the old Mimi’s/new Strouds and the Landmark Bank building.) The parking lot is on the left. The trail isn’t visible from there, but walk to the back of the lot and across a thin strip of grass to find it.

We headed southwest on the trail toward Antioch. The morning was beautiful, but we appreciated the shady asphalted path both for the sun block and for our foot comfort.

The path goes under Antioch Road,  over the creek,   past a park, and eventually under Switzer Road where a cycling group had stopped to have a photo taken.

Lots of joggers, walkers, bicyclist, dog walkers, and any other kind of trail user you can name were on the trail because our usual heat and humidity took a short break today. It was in the 70’s with a nice breeze. Hurray!

West of Switzer, the trail runs along the south edge of Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead—very busy today —and St. Andrew’s Golf Club—also busy. There’s access to a restroom next to the trail on the golf club grounds.  It came in handy, because by then we had walked for almost an hour and had left home earlier than that. We thank St. Andrew’s and the trail supporters who made the facility available.

During some of our six mile walk, we felt as if we were in the middle of a deep woods;  in other parts we glimpsed beautifully landscaped back yards;  still other parts were open and sunny.  

On the west side of the golf course, the trail divides. One path continues to the southwest; the other heads north. We walked north up to 137^th Street and then headed back. South of the Deanna Rose Farmstead someone previously built some little elf houses in several hollow trees and named that part of the trail “Hollow Tree Lane.” (See my write-up and pictures and the short story I wrote, inspired by the mysterious creator of the elf houses.) Now the clever houses are gone (sad, sad) but a reminder or two remain.  

After the hike? Food, of course. A new area called Prairie Fire became our destination for lunch in a place where neither of us had been. There is a multistoried parking garage adjacent to the restaurants and recreation venues. It’s a good thing, because multitudes of people found this area before we did, and there wasn’t one parking space available on the street. We roamed through Pinstripes. It’s a gigantic, gorgeous new building which features bowling, bocce ball, and a bistro (plus bars, meeting rooms, lounge areas, and a huge outdoor eating space.) Our food was average-to-high priced but delicious. I had the Tuesday soup of the day, stuffed green pepper soup. Yum. And the bread sticks with pesto oil for the table tasted terrific to us starving trail walkers. We asked for more bread.

Down the street and around the corner from Pinstripes is the amazing-looking Museum at Prairie Fire. It’s associated with the natural history museum in New York City.    That and the cinema, the brewery, and the rest of the restaurants and shops present reasons for future visits to Prairie Fire.

Happy Trails.