On our way to the Zip Line yesterday we had passed the Canon City Prison Museum. It seemed to be something unique, educational and at $10 per adult, much cheaper thing to do so decided to take a look. A former women’s prison the Prison Museum was small, only housing 40 inmates when it was open and is located right next to an actual prison housing over 1,100 prisoners. There were number of interesting exhibits including an actual gas chamber where eight convicts were executed and a coffee table made from weapons confiscated from inmates.
Afterwards we had lunch in Rover and went to the nearby Centennial Park which turned out to have an excellent playground and a large splash pad. Funny thing though was that they had the splash pad roped off and had capacity restrictions on entry. By this time all stores and restaurants were open for full capacity indoor dining so it seemed to me kinda silly to still have capacity restrictions on an outdoor splash pad. Olivia was able to get in though and had a grand time.
I chatted with some of the parents watching their kids at the splash pad and one of them happened to live in Minneapolis and were in town visiting their daughter and grandson. I had been debating which road to take to Minneapolis and they said they preferred the slightly longer route through Kansas City because it was a bit more interesting and only took thirty minutes longer than the direct route through Nebraska. The Nebraska route was about a fifteen hour drive so an extra thirty minutes was no big deal.
Our travel style usually features extreme flexibility. We rarely make reservations more than a day or two in advance since if the weather changes or we hear of something interesting we can quickly change our plans. Since it was going to be hot west, we head east. If we find ourselves someplace nice, we stay longer, if it is not so nice we move on to someplace better. We usually have no idea where we will be next week.
We spent the entire afternoon parked at the park before driving back to Colorado Springs to get gas and then we drove for a few more hours until we hit Kansas and stopped at a rest stop for the night. It was one of the best rest stops we have encountered with clean bathrooms and even a dedicated loop away from the trucks which had a number of RV’s already parked. There was even a free sewage dump and potable water.