Green Hills in OK

I guess I associate Oklahoma with the Dust Bowl and expected it to be flat, barren and dusty. So I was surprised to see how green and hilly it is, at least where we were. Once we got to the Texas Panhandle, it got pretty flat and dry, but the Dust Bowl was in the 1930's, so undoubtedly they use  better farming methods nowadays.

We arrived in Tulsa mid-day and spent the afternoon cleaning out the A/C unit, which had begun to drip profusely inside the trailer. We've never used the trailer A/C as much as we have on this trip. David figured the drains had plugged up, forcing water back inside. Hopefully it's fixed.

The next day it was raining hard, so we went to the Will Rogers museum and learned all about his interesting life. We especially enjoyed seeing old clips of him using his lasso. He could do some incredible tricks with it. Tragically he died in a plane crash at age 56. We also tried to see a couple things on Route 66, but there wasn't much to see on the stretch we were on except a blue whale, and it was still raining.

In the afternoon we went on a self-guided walking tour of Art Deco buildings in downtown Tulsa. Many buildings were ornate on the outside and

even more amazing on the inside. David was underwhelmed. I thought it was neat.

The following day was beautiful and we rode our bikes along the river trail through town. This river trail isn't as nice as the one in Little Rock--it's more urban and part of it passes by oil refineries, but it does have some nice parks and views. We saw lots of birds, including white herons and a colony of white pelicans.

Along the trail we came upon the huge Route 66 sculpture depicting a car full of people coming face to face with a horse and buggy. We tried to go on a single-track trail at Turkey Mountain, but it was too narrow for me and besides, we had already ridden long enough.

In the afternoon we visited the Gilcrease Museum with its exquisit exhibits of Native American and Western art, Remingtons and Russells and Mexican masks, but no photos are allowed inside.

In OK city, we rode our bikes on their river trail, but it was a bit disappointing, mostly paralleling a road through town. The OK River looked muddy and had trash in it.

I did get a good look at a scissor-tailed flycatcher (state bird of OK) perched on a tree beside the trail.

The day before we had a wonderful guided tour of the inside of the state capitol and gained some insight into local politics.

The OK City National Memorial was striking and moving and situated on the exact site where the Murrah building stood before it was bombed in 1995.

A chair represents each person killed. A park ranger was on hand to explain the events of the day and its impact on the city. Also there's museum, but we didn't have time to visit it.

The Centennial Land Run monument is a pretty amazing set of sculptures about a day in history--April 22, 1889--in which about 50,000 land-hungry settlers rushed at a signal given at noon to claim a 160-acre parcel of land in federal "Unassigned Lands" that had been Indian Territory.

A bunny hopped across the grass and found some shade to escape the heat.

The National Cowboy and Western Museum had a reconstructed Western town, Western movie clips and trivia, an exhibit of hundreds of different kinds of barbed wire

and all kinds of other exhibits about the American West. You could easily spend all day. We spent a couple hours.

We spent our last day in OK in Lawton. At Fort Sill National Historic Landmark we learned about Buffalo Soldiers, Indians and fort-related history. We saw the guardhouse where Geronimo was imprisoned a short while

 and visited his grave.

After years of fighting the white man, Geronimo spent the remainder of his life on a small farm with his family near the fort but was free to travel, even participating in Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows and selling autographed photos of himself.

The 59,000-acre Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge was another OK surprise with its lichen-covered red rock hills and rolling prairie. The visitor center had a good video, excellent exhibits and a place to finally recycle the aluminum sparkling water cans I had been accumulating.

We drove around, watched prairie dogs and visited Holy City, where a passion play takes place once a year. It was too hot to take a hike.






On the way to Amarillo, we drove through small towns that looked like they had seen better days. Driving through Amarillo on the Interstate, we could see every fast food restaurant imaginable lining the road. We only had the afternoon there and the A/C had started leaking again, so David borrowed a ladder, got on the roof, disassembled the unit and cleaned out the drains for the second and hopefully last time, at least for this trip.

The cats are beginning to enjoy aspects of their new lifestyle.