Brewster

Brewster is another small town in Thomas County. Here, too, the harvest seemed to be the center of daily life for the residents. The homes and yards here were fairly nice, but some of the yards seemed unkempt -- possibly because the demands of farming left little extra time for lawn-mowing.

We saw several cute businesses downtown and a long line of trucks full of grain, just waiting to unload at the scales outside the grain elevator.

Levant

A few miles down the road from Colby sits Levant, a town just barely big enough to be its own Census Designated Place.

We found a charming old Texaco station here. (With a lovely woman standing in front of it!) Equally charming was this public announcement board smack dab in the middle of main street.

Most of the announcements on it were about either the Fourth of July (which was celebrated the day before we came through) or the wheat harvest, which we found to be foremost in the minds of many small-town residents in this part of the state.

Colby

Colby, the seat of Thomas County, is a mix of old and new.

There's a well-worn historic downtown area, including one of the more impressive county courthouses we've seen so far. Many of the businesses and homes in this part of town seem old, and a few show signs of decay.

There are, however, many newer parts of town, including a fantastic Aquatic Park. If it hadn't been so late in the day, we would have been sorely tempted to stop and let the kids have some time in the water on this hot July afternoon.

In all, Colby had the feel of a town secure in its history and optimistic about the future.

Edit: We also wanted to mention that we love the gorilla statue at the truck stop just out of town. We visited it on our way to Colorado on 9/9/2017.

Mingo

Western Kansas has a lot of small towns that aren't much more than a co-op, a church or two, and perhaps a couple of businesses.

Mingo was one of these. We didn't see any businesses, but it definitely had a grain elevator and a small church.

Sometimes, I get depressed by towns like this one. They're growing smaller each day, and before too long, perhaps no one will be left. It feels like the life is slowly draining out of them, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop the trend.

But to stop there is to forget that these towns are populated by a heroic people.

Farmers, ranchers, teachers, business owners, and many others are still there, and they will hang on to the end. Like the stalwart defenders at the Alamo or the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, these folks aren't contented to go gentle into that good night.

They are determined to keep living on their ancestral land, to keep sowing and harvesting, and, in short, to keep doing what they can to maintain the way of life they love.

And dedication like that, my friends, is something worth driving out to Mingo to see.