more kansas

Turns out, if you check your camera, you just might have more pictures than you thought. Here are a few more tidbits from our trip to KS in May.

As I mentioned, we went to Missouri for the 13-year periodical cicada emergence. In SE KS and SW MO, we saw a lot of box turtles crossing the road (so cute). On one of our trips through the area we were at, I casually noticed what I thought was a turtle crossing the road. But, that "turtle" actually caused some excitement among certain members of the crew in our van (did I mention that both sets of our parents went with us?). Brian and his dad were pretty excited about the huge tarantula that was on the road. Naturally, we turned around so it could be collected.

This beast of a spider is now living out its days in an aquarium in Brian's parents' basement. I think Brian's mom was pretty excited about that since she is the one who ended up taking care of Brian's (long-living!) last tarantula after he moved out for college. Understandably, taking care of a tarantula is especially difficult in the winter months when it is no easy task to find crickets for it to eat.

On our way back to Colorado, we drove through the craziest dust storm in western Kansas. I had never experienced anything like it.

If you can make out the elevator in this picture, it is about a mile from where we were stopped in our car. The whole town disappeared in this dust storm!