Because, why not?

Justin and I have wanted to venture into the Midwest a little bit ever since we moved here.  When we admit this to people we're usually met with blank faces, followed by the inevitable "Why?"  The only answer we've had is "Why not?"  Because, really the place isn't exactly brimming over with tourist attractions.  However, we've been dutifully researching for some time, and we finally decided that we had found enough to see and do to justify a trip into Kansas.  Two trips, actually.  We're going to have to wait for the second one though until the kids are a little older so that we can take them to tour the salt mines, the air and space museum, and the Eisenhower museum.  For this trip we decided to stop in Eastern Colorado, in Granada to tour the Amache Japanese Internment camp, or what's left of it, then continue on into Kansas to Ft. Larned National Historic Site, then spend the night in Great Bend, Kansas.  The next morning we planned to visit Pawnee Rock, Castle Rock, and Monument Rocks on our way back to Colorado.  Just a short weekend trip that admittedly seemed to be primarily about looking at rocks.

We left early Saturday morning, and immediately decided that we're definitely now a minivan sized family.  We rented a "small SUV," and it was very snug.  VERY snug.  Particularly the three car seats across the backseat.  Regardless, we were very excited to be on the road.  We didn't even make it out of the county before we were stopping to change a blow out diaper...the joys of traveling with an infant.  From there we drove three hours to Granada, Colorado.  There was a tiny museum in town that a local high school teacher keeps.  I had spoken with him on the phone earlier and he told me that there was another group scheduled for 1030 and that we would need to basically tour with them, because he wouldn't be able to keep the museum open all day on a Saturday.  We pulled in at 1030 and it appeared that the tour had already started.  The museum was a one-room affair.  The high school teacher was a bit of a bragger, and full of a lot of stories about out-bidding people on ebay for certain items in the museum.  The other group was a dozen or so older ladies from Kansas.  The high school teacher was enjoying having them as a captive audience (most of them looked rather bored), so we took a minute to walk through, look at a few interesting things and then dart back out the door to head out to the internment camp for the driving tour. 

Justin was driving.  We had a brief, "discussion" about directions.  Justin is usually right when it comes to maps, I'm usually wrong, this situation proved to be no different, and we did finally make our way out to the remnants of a Koi pond, a mess hall, some latrines, and a high school, etc. 

Water tank from the camp

Guard tower.  Seems kind of absurd out here.  Not sure where they were worried about these people going, US citizens...kind of boggles the mind.

Evalyn is a tiny bit uncertain about the camera Dad keeps pointing at her.

Some of the old foundations of a building.

They're just kind of loving being out of the car.

Hard to imagine anyone volunteering out of an internment camp to go fight for the country imprisoning them, but some of them did.

One of them even earned the medal of honor.

These purple flowers were everywhere, and Vivian loved them.  I picked a few for her, and now I think that I'm allergic to them.  Not sure what else could have caused the minor little rash later that day.

Truthfully, it was super interesting.  We loved it.  It gave me a much better appreciation for the way these people suffered...they suffered.  They had some replicated barracks up, and I think my dining room is as big as the space that was allocated for an entire family.

We left Amache and headed into Kansas.  We spent way more time in Amache than we had anticipated and then we had neglected to calculate in a lost hour crossing into central time, so we arrived at Ft. Larned 30 minutes after closing.  Still, Kansas may not be super exciting, but I found it to be quite picturesque.  Picturesque enough that we didn't feel too bad about missing Ft. Larned.

We arrived in Great Bend, checked into our hotel, and were not totally thrilled with our ground level room.  It had some sliding glass doors that we assumed opened up onto a patio...nope, try an indoor conference room, where some sort of very loud birthday party was taking place, (and continued until 10pm).  We left for dinner, and immediately became aware that either people in Kansas are just all unabashed starers, or there is something about us that seems to turn every head in the state.  People were very friendly, super nice, but really, they seemed to feel quite comfortable just staring at us, even when we made eye contact.  This persisted for the remainder of our time throughout the state.

The next morning we woke up early and left for Castle Rock.  We made a game time decision to eliminate Pawnee Rock on the grounds that further reading made it seem even less interesting than we had initially anticipated.  Castle Rock proved to be something of an adventure.  It took us HOURS to find it.  So this is partly because we failed to look up directions, and we don't have smart phones.  (we've been reconsidering upgrading back to smart phones, and this incident has definitely pushed us further in that direction.)  Our first attempt to find Castle Rock was really just picking a random dirt road in the general vicinity and launching down it.  Some time later we determined that this wasn't the best method.  I was the navigator.  Justin was somewhat dissatisfied with my performance in that capacity.  He took over my duties, and eventually, he got us straightened out and we arrived at Castle Rock.  It was kind of interesting.  I don't mean to seem snobbish about this, but it was not exactly spectacular.  

The rear view of a wild turkey we spotted on our drive out there.

Side view of the same turkey.  We didn't see much in the way of wildlife this trip.

Castle Rock.  Viv out snapping a picture of it with an old iphone that we use to send Marco Polo videos.

Yours truly touching the rock.

From there we continued on to Monument Rocks which were more interesting, less windy, and significantly easier to locate.  

The kids loved running around at this one.

From there we loaded back up and drove home.  It was a few more hours of this: 

I don't think I'd love living there, but I do think it's pretty in it's own way.

and then we started to see Pike's Peak coming into view.  We were forced to stop a few miles out to address some crisis in the backseat with Ivan, a water bottle, and soaking wet pants.  He continued the trip home in this attire:

That's a confident little man.

Now we're trying to catch up on the missed sessions of conference, and looking forward to our next chance to explore the great Midwest!