Garden City

 

We decided to sell our house, and on the day we listed it, Magen asked me, "Do you wanna go toddling?"

Why, yes. Yes I did.

So we decided to head back to southwest Kansas until the house sold, using Garden City as our headquarters and knocking out as much as we could of Finney County and its neighbors. 

We drove to Garden City after I finished work Friday night, and then we toured around it some between trips to other counties. Our favorite part was the amazing aquatic center, Garden Rapids at the Big Pool. We swam there three times in two days! The lazy river and waterslides were outstanding, and the cold water felt great after days of driving through the Kansas heat and dust.

The town itself is fair-sized, just under 30,000 people. There are a lot of meat packing and agricultural jobs in the area, as well as a community college, library, and various businesses. It's one of the most ethnically diverse towns in Kansas; more than half of the population is Hispanic, and there are also large immigrant communities from Somalia and Asia. There are, of course, many white rural Kansans here, too, and this sometimes creates unexpected contrasts. When we were at the pool, we saw a group of Latinas sunbathing in bikinis right next to Mennonite girls splashing around in ankle-length swim dresses. They were all there to enjoy the cool water on a hot day, and they didn't seem to think twice about their differences from the other pool patrons.

While we were here, we saw a truck that had an encounter with either a very large mosquito or a normal-sized bird.