Phoenix Domes told our story. Here's the part we usually leave out.

The company that built our domes just wrote about us. Phoenix Domes runs a series on properties using their structures, and Return to Roots is the newest one. It's flattering. It's also a good excuse to tell the fuller version, since most guests only ever see the finished product.

Thirty acres and one stubborn opinion

Camping makes you give something up. A hotel takes the outdoors away completely. We never accepted that those were the only two options.

So we bought 30 acres of Missouri pasture in Butler, about an hour southwest of Kansas City, and started looking for something that could split the difference. Geodesic domes did it. Eight meters across, with a panoramic window that turns the tree line into your front wall. You open your eyes and see the field, not a parking lot.

The part nobody photographs

Here's what doesn't make the Instagram grid.

We paid a local contractor for professional spray foam insulation on every dome. That was not a cheap line item and we didn't love writing the check. But a Missouri July is brutal, and a Missouri January is worse, and thin insulation would have meant a property you could only rent five months a year. We added floor-mounted mini-splits for heating and cooling on top of it.

We also learned the lesson every first-time dome owner learns: site prep takes longer than you planned. Always. Doing it properly before anything shows up on a truck saves you double the time on the back end.

That's most of the advice we gave Phoenix Domes for their readers. Prep the site. Don't cheap out on insulation. Pad your build timeline. And design for the moment a guest walks in and stops talking, because that moment is the whole business.

What happened when we opened the gate

We opened July 2, 2026, with two domes finished. Sixteen bookings landed on the calendar within days.

That was thrilling and, honestly, a relief. Two more domes are still coming as we grow into the demand.

One of our first guests wrote something we've thought about a lot since: "Had a fantastic experience...with a very modern dome...This is a dream."

Read the whole thing

Phoenix Domes has the full write-up, including the build details we skipped over here. Read it on PhoenixDomes.com.

And if any of this made you want to see the view yourself, we're 60 miles from Kansas City with a dome open.