After seeing King Midas’ tomb and looking in the museum of artifacts, we hiked up on top of one of the burial mounds. Tractors drove past (Big Ben was thrilled), men farmed their land…no one seemed bothered by the American family tromping on 2,700 year old burial mounds. (Spellcheck is telling me to change tromping to tramping, but I just refuse. I like my non-word.)

One of us just wanted to find cool rocks,  hoping one might be a fossil or an artifact.

And another just wanted to dig in the dirt.

Afterwards, we drove just down the winding road to the spot where the actual town would have been so long ago. They are excavating it little by little. It was very easy to pick out where the town walls were. The large stones were still there. Around this little town was just a simple barbed wire fence, studded with big tufts of goat hair. Clearly, the local goats didn’t care if the town was 27 or 2700 years old. If it has good grass, they go in. We walked the perimeter of the ruins, peering in, thinking about King Midas and the invasions of this city, and considering going under the barbed wire fence. We enjoyed the walk with some friends….

And then one smart little CampbellKid got the idea to take one of those little tufts of hair and make herself a goatee. Here’s to a cute “kid!”

We enjoyed our outing. I never really was interesting in archaeology growing up, but now it’s definitely in my system. It’s a lot more fun to “tromp” on an ancient city than read about it in a history book.