| I had to get the hell out of Dodge (too easy). On the road I passed a couple of old grain elevators just standing alongside the railroad tracks. |
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| I looked it up online and found out that apparently they were built in 1915. |
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| But this was the destination for the morning, Fort Larned National Historic Site. |
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| The flag shows that it was rather windy that morning. It was also fairly cool. |
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| Buffalo soldier in the heart of America. |
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| Fort Larned was established in 1860
when Camp Alert, set up a year earlier, was moved three miles to
near the confluence of the Pawnee and Arkansas Rivers. Here are the barracks. |
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| The need for a fort was to deal with
conflicts between Native Americans and westward travelers along the
Santa Fe Trail. Also in a barracks building is a display of an infirmary. |
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| The seats on the right are clearly toilets, but I don't know what that tub-looking thing is. |
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| The post surgeon's office. |
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| Still windy. |
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| The original cemetery at Fort Larned. |
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| Man shall not live by bread alone, particularly fake display bread. |
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| A schoolroom. Was it for teaching the soldiers? |
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| Here's where they keep all the stuff that is not bread. |
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| Cannons. |
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| So it seems that Army blouses came in six sizes, 1 through 6. |
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| 2nd Lieutenant Charles E. Campbell shared a room like this with his wife, Anna, and their infant daughter, Ellen. |
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| Post surgeon Captain William Forewood had more room as he was not married. |
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| The piano in this room is called a square grand piano, a shape that made it easy to carry in a wagon. Music was an important form of entertainment on remote frontier posts like Fort Larned. |
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| The Pawnee River near the fort. |
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| I did see a number of people out on bicycle rides in the middle of nowhere. I guess if you have enough storage attached to your bike it could be a nice, although slow, way to get around. |
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