Fort Larned's Labor Day

It's been a while since I last posted.  I have three excuses.  First, August was a slow month at Fort Larned because it was so blazing hot.  Even native Kansans noted it was hotter than usual, which was interesting because the last two winters I spent in North Dakota were two of the coldest and snowiest in a long time.  Thankfully, that seems to be over and temperatures are back down below 100.  When it got in the 70s, I thought I needed a jacket.  My transformation is complete.

My second excuse is that I actually spent most of my time working on the new Fort Larned website, which dominated most of my work time for the last two months.  There are still a few bugs I'm working out due to the new software the NPS deployed still being perfected, but check it out anyway.  Fort Larned National Historic Site website.  We're also on facebook at www.facebook.com/fortlarnednhs

The third excuse is the arrival of our junior ranger.

I can tell when she's actually asleep because her arms go like this.

So while mom and baby were still at the hospital, I had work to do at Fort Larned because of our special event weekend.  Since then I've enjoyed some time off, which has been necessary due to the impossibility of a good night's sleep.

Labor Day at Fort Larned was fun, even though the flies were atrocious.  I presented a new program, "Connections: Fort Larned and the National Parks," which attempts to illuminate the ways in which Fort Larned's history connects it to other national parks.  Attendance was pitiful, especially given the amount of time I devoted to preparing the program.  So that was a disappointment.  Hopefully I get a better venue for it sometime.

 Here, we're marching out to retrieve the flag.  I'm smiling because the first sergeant had to skip over the mule poo on the company street.  "By column left, march!"

Here we are retrieving the garrison flag at the end of the day.  Since it's pretty windy in Kansas, and the flag is enormous, the trick is to collapse the area of the flag as quickly as possible by giving it a big hug.  Done wrong, it could easily knock people over.  I'm on the left with my back to the camera.

Lastly, here is a video of another artillery demonstration.  I'm running the sponge-rammer in this demonstration, one of three we did over the weekend.

Thanks to my dad for the Fort pictures above and to father-in-law for the artillery raw video.