KANSAS!

Monday, June 22^nd – We left Guthrie, OK mid- morning and drove to Halstead, KS – just north of Wichita.  Whoa….WINDY day!!!   It was fine if we were traveling in a northern direction, as the wind was “with us”, but the minute we had to turn in an east or west direction, YIKES!!! It just hit us broadside, and really buffeted the RV – I was happy when we got here, and when we checked in the lady told Earl if we heard a lot of horns blowing, to head immediately to the storm shelter!!!  Whaaaaat?  Not sure I want to be in Kansas for long!  We’re at Spring Lake RV Resort. $28 a night…. A very large park with good wifi, no TV.  An abundance of geese wandering around near the fishing areas.

 They have a lot of man made lakes around that supposedly are good for fishing.  Cute little bridge takes you over to an island where you can have a picnic lunch, uh, maybe if the temperature was 20 degrees cooler!

I've never even seen a Storm Shelter before.  Naturally, I was curious so I had to go down and check it out.  Just a big ol boring cement room.  I sure hope I never have to experience one, but I'm sure I'd be thankful it was there if a tornado was coming through!

And THIS is what we saw in Kansas:

Don’t get too excited at the scenery, y’all! Just kidding, sort of……  It actually has a kind of beauty of its own – waves of grain blowing in the breeze and lush green healthy looking corn.  We obviously need states like Kansas that can produce so much of what we use.  

Earl grew up going out in the wheat fields in Canada, and he’d grind the husks between the palms of his hand and blow the chaff away and eat the kernels.  So he wanted to re-live this experience, so we stopped by the side of the road and he did indeed do just that.  He wanted me to taste.  I did and promptly spit it out!  Yuck – dry, crusty, tasteless grain – badly in need of salt!

I thought Florida was flat! You ain’t seen nothin till you’ve seen Kansas!  Endless fields of either wheat or corn.  As far as you can see.  Several comments on FB told me there are also sunflowers grown here, but as of yet, we’ve only seen wheat and corn and a few cattle.  Oh and remember how excited I was about the longhorn cattle and how we had traveled all over TX and not seen a single one, until Fort Worth at the cattle drive.  Well, I think they must have all migrated up to Oklahoma, as on our way out of OK this morning, we saw fields of Longhorns!!  So cool. 

We went into the big city of Halstead to eat dinner.  Hmmmm they have a Subway and a pizza place. That’s IT.  They also sell burgers, wings, and some pasta dishes as well as ice cream.  They were BUSY and I can see why since it’s about the only choice!  Cute little town though.

Tuesday, June 23^rd -  This was our main day to explore Kansas…. Driving through many more fields of corn and wheat, we arrived in Hutchinson to experience STRATACA!  This attraction, we are told, scientists believe was formed about 275 million years ago! It’s the only museum of its kind in the western hemisphere, Strataca (formerly called The Kansas Underground Salt Museum) offers an engaging experience in an exotic, subterranean world.  We descended 650 feet below the Kansas Prairie into what was originally the Carey Salt Mine (to my friend, Barry Carey, are these people in your family tree?)  The doors opened to a glistening Stratadome, where we were surrounded by nothing but SALT! There was one 6,000 lb. block of pure salt!  We covered a little historical, a little geological, and a good bit of cultural history as we toured through the maze of salt chambers on a tram.  We were allowed to take a souvenir piece of salt, as long as it was no bigger than our fist.  That was all on a tour called The Dark Ride and wow, you’ve never experience DARK like that until they turn off any lights and you could not see the back of your hand! We also went on an excursion on the Salt Mine Express, an underground train that gave us an additional chance to explore raw mined out areas and view items left behind from miners, many over 60 years ago!  ALL year round, the mine is 68 degrees with 45% humidity!  The miners were telling us they love working there in the summers AND in the winters, as they get an ideal working temperature year round.  The only big negative is that in the winter it gets dark up here about 4:30 so most of them go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, going sometimes weeks without ever seeing the sun.  That would definitely NOT be for me! 

Notice the jacket! Brrrrr first time I've been chilly in a few days! LOL

The mine is also home to Underground Vaults and Storage, which is entrusted with valuable materials including the original films of classic movies! A special gallery recreates this facility and includes an on-going exhibit of actual costumes worn in movies including BatMan and the Matrix. 

There is a government program for storing documents from WWI and on….. they really realized the value of it, when they realized Hitler was using salt mines to store all the valuable art and possessions stolen from the Jews.  If you saw the movie, Monument Men, you’ll remember all about that! Now I want to see it again!  Too many valuable things have been lost through catastrophic events, hurricanes, floods, tornados, etc. so now there are hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable items stored in these vaults, including an original newspaper the day of Lincoln's assassination!  Fascinating!

We learned that a great percentage of the salt mined here goes to provide salt for roads in winter conditions.  They supply 65% of the total salt used in Chicago. 

We finished our tour about 2:30 and we were hungry, so we found out about Yoder, an Amish community about 6-8 miles away.  What a pretty little community!  Lovely farmhouses and tidy gardens.  What was very surprising was most of the garages had CARS in them!  Has Amish tradition changed? Only a very few horse and buggies, and LADIES driving the tractors!  Hmmmm 

 I thought this sign was funny - What Happens Here will be posted on Facebook - this, in an Amish community.  LOL

 I love great quotes - isn't this a good one!

We ate lunch at Carriage Crossing Restaurant, home of good Amish cooking….right as we walked in the door were the most amazing looking pies and CHECK OUT THESE CINNAMON ROLLS – They are about 8” across!!!  Can you believe it, I’ve never seen one cinnamon roll that can feed a family of 4 – haha.

I had fried chicken, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes and gravy, and Earl had country fried steak with baked beans and mashed potatoes and gravy.  He couldn’t even finish MINE, but he did do well on his!  We even split a piece of Snickers Cream Cheese Pie – we couldn’t eat all of it either!  Looked like almost half a pie!  Gracious, are Amish people generally heavy or do they work it off because of so much manual labor?  

Anyway, we waddled out of there, and then drove to Newton, home of MARK SIBLEY!  Mark, I’m shocked and disappointed we weren’t greeted with a large billboard claiming “Home of Mark Sibley!” – That’s the least they could have done!!! 

We had to find a Lowe’s so we could buy a new step ladder.  Funny story, at least funny to me, not too funny to Earl.  We were at a park that had a rule about having anything outside your RV, so any ladders had to be stored underneath.  Earl uses it not only to wash the RV but to put up the screen over our windshield when we’re parked….allows us to see out, but no one to see in.  He got the car all hooked up and he went through his check list when we left yesterday morning.  I go through my checklist of everything that has to be done inside – only takes me about 15 min max, and takes him maybe 20-25. We left about our usual 10:30 a.m. time frame and had only driven forward a bit, when Earl, with the most chagrined look and voice said, “Oh NO, I’ve crushed the ladder!”   We don’t normally have it underneath, but in a bin, so he didn’t have it on his checklist and we drove all the way over it the entire length of it!  It was the flattest ladder you’ve ever seen!  Like a pancake!  Earl said it looked like a cookie sheet. I so wish I had taken a photo! It struck me funny and I was laughing uproariously, mostly at his shocked expression and dismay.  I have a weird sense of humor I guess.  Can you hear me laughing all over again as I type this?  We just walked it right over to the dumpster and went on our merry way.   So…. that’s why we had to find a Lowe’s for a new ladder….and that’s the rest of the story, said in my Paul Harvey voice.

I have been wanting to see one of these oil derricks (is that what you call them?) up close, so we pulled off the road and went and checked this one out.  Interesting!  They're just all over Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, right out in the middle of fields, and just going.  Wonder how much oil?  What do they cost? How long do they last?  This one seemed terribly corroded, but was just toiling away!

We got home, where it was hotter than blue blazes!  98 degrees and not one tiny bit of shade on our site, so our A/C is working overtime, and I just THANK THE GOOD LORD for A/C!!!! Headed out in the morning just for an overnighter, we probably won’t even unhook. Then on to Nebraska!  Can’t wait to see our friends, Harold and Anita Smith and their beautiful farm we’ve heard so much about over the years!  

OKLAHOMA!!!

Wednesday – June 17 was another travel day.  We are just so ready to get OUT of this rain and muddy parks and on to some sunshine!  Earl woke up early to check on the weather and saw that a huge band was moving through around 10:00 and we usually don’t leave till around 10:30 so we hustled around and got out by about 9:00 to beat the rain.  We came through dreary rain into Oklahoma, but not torrential, just steady. We want to go to Tulsa while we’re here, so on the way, I got on my phone and asked Siri how far it was from Guthrie, OK to Tulsa.  Siri responded "which Guthrie, Paul Guthrie, or Dianne Guthrie?" (two of our closest friends at home) LOL.  WAY too long!!!  By the time we checked in to the Cedar Valley RV Park in Guthrie, OK ($35 night)  the skies were clear, and no rain expected this afternoon, so we are headed out to Oklahoma City for the afternoon.

We went straight to the Memorial and Museum, the highest priority of things we wanted to see during this stop. This is the 20^th anniversary of the bombing.  By far the most impressive memorial I’ve ever seen! Powerful and moving, I would hope EVERY American gets to see this! The outdoor part of the Memorial is free and well worth seeing.  

 This is the Reflecting Pool, which occupies what was once N.W. 5th St. There are 3 walls like the one you see here beyond the pool.  They are called The Gates of Time and frame the moment of destruction. The first at 9:01 represents the innocence of the city before the attack - a normal day, just like any other.  The 2nd at 9:02 is the formal entrance into the garden, and the 9:03 wall represents the moment lives were forever changed in that time of horror in that moment and the days and weeks following the attack.  VERY sobering to reflect here, knowing what happened!

View of the Museum from across the Reflecting Pool.

 Sobering as you consider each of those 168 chairs symbolize a lost life! Small ones represent the 19 children killed that day. They are arranged in nine rows, one for each of the nine floors destroyed in the blast, and the chairs are placed according to the floor on which they were killed.  Some were working, some were just visiting, and the children were in the daycare. Tragic visual.

But inside you hear the real stories..... one of the most gripping was in the beginning, they had us go into this smallish room where there was only a conference table and chairs around it.  There was a LIVE recording of that morning, from a building across the street, where you hear the gavel, and an attorney is introduced who is speaking to a panel about water rights and whatever was on the agenda (boring, which increases the shock). A mere two minutes in the middle of her droning on about this, you hear the enormous blast, the sound that changed our country forever! Then screaming and frantic cries of what has happened, the need to exit the building etc.  The shock even in adjacent buildings was tremendous, and then to see the devastation caused by pure evil intent that day and the loss of lives just was incredibly emotional.

 This is a view of the "Survivor Tree", a 90+ year old American Elm, that bears witness to the violence of that day 20 years ago, and now stands as a profound symbol of human resilience.  The message to visitors around the base of the tree reads: The spirit of this city and this nation will not be defeated; our deeply rooted faith sustains us.

 More than 200 feet of original fence provides a place for over 80,000 tokens of love and hope and remembrance are placed.  Very moving to walk along this fence and see photos and teddy bears and even keys or other small tokens.  What aching hearts the families had, I can't even imagine what it would be like.

 I love the huge statue just across the street on the corner.  The inscription reads...And Jesus Wept.

Thursday, June 18^th was a day of rest for us….the weather was supposed to be awful so we decided to stay over the weekend as there is more we want to see and do here, so we’ll cooperate with the weather and just enjoy a quiet day of reading and catching up on things. We love our quiet days. Beautiful skies when we took a walk around the park. This was like at 9:30 p.m.!

Friday, June 19^th was a full, busy, beautiful day!  We drove into Tulsa and went straight to Oral Roberts University.  We know so many people who have attended here and we’ve heard so much about it.  VERY impressive campus!  Surprising what a lot of activities were going on in the summer.  We expected it to be very quiet, and it was wonderfully peaceful, with beautiful gardens but many tours and student activities going on. Our first sight of the huge praying hands sculpture was impressive!

 We loved the Prayer Tower.  It is 200 feet tall and in the shape of a modern cross, with the observation deck serving as the crossbeams.  The points jutting out represent the Crown of Thorns. An eternal flame burns atop the tower. This is the inscription on the floor.....

There are seven "portals" that serve as a guide through prayer.  These are all just under the windows that reveal a 360 degree view of the entire campus.

This room includes a map of the world to foster a global perspective, and a large cross, created by the ORU Art Department, where you can take a small card - write a prayer or praise, roll it and tuck it into one of the holes in the cross created for this purpose.

This shadow box and cross were on the walls and I WANT THESE!!!  I had hoped they'd have them in their bookstore, but no one seemed to know where they came from.  They may have been custom made and are not available, but I would LOVE to have one or both, so if anyone has ever seen them anywhere, please let me know!

 After ORU, we went to lunch at Ted’s Café Escondito in Tulsa on the recommendation of our friends, Sheila and Orlan.  WOW!!  Maybe the best Mexican restaurant we’ve been to, and that is really saying something as you know we eat Mexican at least once almost everywhere we go. Haha  Seriously, I don’t know how we seem to attract such generous and nice people!!  Our server was a beautiful black girl who was so personable and eager to please.  They immediately brought chips and salsa AND queso (!) to us, all complimentary, of course, that’s not too surprising.  But then the manager stopped by our table to see how we were doing and when we told him we were there on a recommendation from friends in FLORIDA, he just beamed and said he’d love for us to try their beef tamales, so he sent over a plate hot out of the oven!  Not my favorite thing – I thought it was a bit mushy and corn tortillas are not my favorite, but then he wanted us to try some other stuff, a new salsa they have and a new HOT salsa they have. Wowee, my mouth was on fire!!  I only had one taste of that, but I did take about a heaping T. and added it to the regular salsa – yum….perfect!  We shared a fajita and it was simply superb!!!  And THEN, our server came over and said the manager would like to give us both a complimentary dessert!!  We hardly ever order dessert, just not enough room!!  But how do you resist hot out of the oven sopapillas topped with cinnamon sugar and honey on the side?  Let’s just say it is now 9:30 and we’ve had nothing since lunch and no plans to eat before bedtime!  But what a pleasant experience with such generosity!  Needless to say, I think the server was delighted with our tip! 

 

After lunch we drove around Tulsa a bit, and found it to be an extraordinarily clean and lovely city.  We then drove on over to Claremore, to the Will Rogers Memorial Museum.  I was astounded generally at my LACK of knowledge of him.  I am a lover of quotes, so I’ve used many of his quotes over the years, but I had no real idea of WHO he was!!! I actually felt kind of embarrassed and appalled at my own ignorance of this man.  He was just before our time, so we were never exposed to his movies and all the news articles by and about him.  Fascinating life!  I found no indication that he might have been a man of faith, which I felt sad about, but he was an extraordinary individual, full of humor and goodwill. An extraordinary philanthropist, and collector of art, and so proud of his heritage as a Cherokee cowboy.  He made over 71 movies, and I was not aware of ANY of them! The grounds and sunken garden were beautiful.

After the Museum, we drove 12 miles on farther to see the Ranch where he was born and grew up.  What a lovely home and don’t you just wish those walls could talk!  Surprisingly, there was no attendant there, and we were free to walk through the house, and grounds, out into the barn and see the animals.  They raised thousands of longhorns back in the day, but there were none around today.  There were, however, lots of goats, including the cutest little baby goats, awwwww, and a lovely peacock that after a lot of coaxing, finally spread his feathers for me. It’s a 400 acre ranch and overlooks beautiful Lake Oolagah. The house was built in 1875 and it would seem it was such a happy house with lots of parties and entertaining, but also it saw its share of sadness with the deaths of several children.

The cradle on the left is Will Roger's cradle as a baby in the room where he was born.

Saturday, June 20^th -  Today we enjoyed a late breakfast at Katie’s Diner downtown, and then went to explore Guthrie. What a great historical and scenic small town. Originating in 1889 when President Harrison, because these were “unassigned lands”, designated Guthrie  as a place to grant “free land” to settlers and within a single day, it had over 10,000 people!  Within 4 months, the Guthrie City Directory listed 6 banks, 16 barbers, 16 blacksmiths, 17 carpenters, 2 cigar manufacturers, 5 newspapers, 7 hardware stores, 15 hotels, 19 pharmacies, 22 lumber dealers, 39 doctors, 40 restaurants and an astounding 81 lawyers (mostly for filing claims).  Nothing like an “instant town”!  In 1890 Oklahoma became a US Territory and Guthrie was selected as the Capital!  In 1907 Oklahoma was officially declared a state and Guthrie claims fame to being the “first capital”.  Lots of bad blood between politicians (I guess things were the same even then!) and long story short, the capital was changed to Oklahoma City, but there are still strong feelings that Guthrie is the “real” capital.  Haha  We took a trolley tour and enjoyed learning about this unique territorial city, which embodies the spirit of Oklahoma.

Interesting architecture in these old old buildings!

We drove around town and found some unique and interesting old homes.

It was late afternoon by the time we got back home and we put our chairs outside to enjoy reading.  It was on the warm side, but we had such a nice breeze, it was very tolerable.  We are continually amazed that it doesn’t get dark till almost 10:00 at night here!  At 9-9:30 at night people are out mowing their yards, etc.  Talk about long days.

Sunday, June 21^st -  Father’s Day!  It’s a little different being “on the road” on days like this, when we seem to doubly miss our kids, but got to talk to all of them.  Mark & Lisa just got in this afternoon from their Italy trip, so we’re thankful they’re home safe and sound.  Jason and family are doing great in Knoxville, and we talked with Ryan and Connor tonight.  So grateful for a wonderful family!

On our way into Oklahoma City one day last week, we saw a large church from the interstate and were intrigued.  Called Crossings Community Church, we could tell it was a happening place, so we decided to go to church there today.  What a delight!  If we lived here, I know we’d come to this church!  It’s large, no idea how many members, but they have 3 completely different worship experiences every Sunday morning. They have an early very liturgical service that I’m sure would have been  interesting.  They have a huge Sanctuary for a blended service, which we debated about.  They have a 200+ voice choir, full orchestra etc. They have a traditional service in The Chapel, and we chose to go to The Venue, which is a more contemporary, high energy casual environment.  We thought it might be a smaller group, but this one service seemed like a large church!  I would estimate there were 600-700 people in our service!  It was great!  Pastor Marty Grubbs has been there for 34 years (which says a lot!) and he goes from service to service, you never know which of the services he’ll be “live” in, the others are telecast on huge screens.  Apparently those who serve do not even know which one, as the greeters explained to us that there would be the same message and while he might not be live in our service, it would seem very much the same.  Wouldn’t you know, he WAS live in our service today!  Cool, although with the huge screens, I tended to watch him more on there than from the platform.  Great message on Fathers and leaving a legacy….Forever A Son…Forever a Father.  Excellent.  They have multiple opportunities for service, a lot of different classes to choose from and some excellent ministries, one of which was featured today, and it’s a ministry for men and women who are just leaving prison.  Helping them to turn their lives around and begin to live Christ centered lives as they assimilate back into society.  VERY touching stories!

Being it was Father’s Day, it was entirely Earl’s choice where to go and eat, and he chose Cheddars again!  I told y’all, we really like that place.  They have amazing onion rings, and every single thing we’ve had there, from appetizers to desserts is first class!

After lunch, we went to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  VERY classy with a gallery of incredible art, much of which is available for purchase, original paintings and bronze sculptures ranging in price from $6,000 to over $60,000.  Very impressive and interesting.  Even an entire replica of an old Western town for us to wander through, going into a Mercantile, the bank, doctor’s office, even a jail.  Extremley well done. $12.50 for admission and Earl got in free for Father’s Day, an unexpected bonus!

 Fun times in Oklahoma.....and tomorrow, it's on to Kansas!  Stay tuned....