Coronado Heights -- May 5, 2004

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Coronado Heights -- May 5, 2004
Last week my friend Kelly and I took a roadtrip in his new car from Wichita Kansas where we live to Salina, Kansas to visit my parents. The next day on our way back to Wichita we decided to go to Coronado Heights (CH) near Lindsborg. He had never been there before and it had been a very long time since I'd been there and we both wanted to go.
We took the Lindsborg exit off of I-35 and drove west until we saw another sign telling us to turn again. We turned onto the steep, winding dirt road that lead to the top of the hill where Coronado Heights is. CH is a small two-story stone fort and picnic area built on top of a hill by the WPA in 1936.
When we got there we discovered the outside picnic area over-run with grade school kids. One of the adults there told us it was only one class and if weren't for them we would've had the whole place to ourselves. It was probably a good thing they were there.
Anyway, Kelly and I went inside to check out the bottom floor first. There were a couple of stone and concrete picnic tables with benches and a place to build a fire. The only light comes from open air windows high up in the walls. I told him about the time several years ago when I went there with a group of my high school friends on a cold winter evening and we had built a fire, but didn't have much to burn. One of the guys in our group started throwing $1 bills on the fire. Later he threw in a bottle of perfume. Luckily for us, it didn't explode. Another time we went there on the 4th of July and a girl in my group sprained her ankle and we had leave early to get her back to town.
After Kelly and I took some pictures of eachother there, we climbed the narrow, winding stairs to the second floor which opens into an open-air area where you can look out across the countryside as far as the eye can see. We took more pictures of the eachother with the beautiful lush green landscapes behind us. We even got one of the adults there to take a picture of us together.
Then it was time for us to leave. He had to be a work at 4 and time was running short.

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