One evening in late October, Be Well Barton County member Donna Krug received an alert on her cellphone that there were two guests at the bicycle campground located behind Central Baptist Church in Great Bend. Donna and her husband John hurried to the camp to welcome them and encourage them to sign the guest book.

“One was going east and one was going west, and they met at the campground,” Krug said. “One was from England. One was from Tucson, Arizona, and they didn’t know each other until about half an hour before I got there.”

Ever since Great Bend was added to the TransAmerica Trail for adventure bicyclists in 2019, members of the Be Well task force and other community volunteers have concentrated on developing the campground behind the church at 3301 Lakin Ave. Mike Woodmansee installed the security cameras that allowed the Krugs to see the site on their cellphones.

The most recent improvement was a mural, completed in September by Great Bend High School graduate Anna Popp, who is now a student at the University of Kansas. (Popp also painted a mural on the entrance to the Claflin swimming pool this summer for the Barton Arts Movement.) It was funded by the Suicide Prevention Task Force.

A community project

The campground was the site chosen for last Thursday’s Great Bend Chamber of Commerce coffee, hosted by Central Kansas Partnership. Because the weather was chilly that morning, the coffee was moved inside the church fellowship hall. CKP task forces include both Be Well and the Suicide Prevention group.

Krug told people about the camp.

It started as a grassy spot with a bicycle repair station and some old picnic tables. But when Be Well learned the TransAmerica Trail would come through Great Bend, they saw a greater need. It is illegal to camp overnight in a City park, Krug said. “But they had this nice grassy area back here and it just seemed like the perfect place to develop.”

One of the first improvements started with a $500 grant. “They put in a recharging station and they bought wood to fix the picnic tables,” she said. Krug’s husband John organized some volunteers to turn the rickety tables into something useful.

Next, Jason Cauley used his wood-burning skills to make a welcome sign.

“Then, we had a community bike ride, Krug said. “Delbert Randolph was at that ride. He looked around and said, ‘Well you need water. You need a toilet.’ So he started thinking about how we could get water to our campground.”

In 2021, Felix Diaz took that on as his Eagle Scout project to honor Devin Randolph, Delbert’s son, who lost his life to suicide in 2020. The Suicide Prevention Task Force provided funds to complete the job. John Krug was the driller at a well-drilling party.

“The doors have opened as we’ve wanted to develop more,” Donna Krug said. “We found out Porta Potties are kind of expensive to rent so we bought one,” thanks to a grant from Wheatland Electric. Be Well also received a community improvement grant through CPI that has helped with funds to sustain the project, she said.

“So, it’s just been such a wonderful effort of so many people.” 

Meeting the two cyclists at the campground in October was “just so cool,” Krug said. “You learn more about the world just through visiting with the people who come through Great Bend, and they are very appreciative of what we have developed here. I’d say that ‘we’ is everyone who’s had a hand in it.”

The mural by Popp shows two riders on a tandem bike. John and Donna Krug are often seen riding a bicycle built for two, but Donna said that isn’t them on the mural. “The message that we were trying for is, ‘You’re never alone.’ And that is really the message of the whole campground.”