Southwest Tour, Tuesday

When we left Tuesday morning, I was the driver. To change drivers in any vehicle we share means moving three mirrors, a steering wheel, a headrest, a seat up and to the front so I can reach the pedal. DH is hard to please with a map so if I were driving, he could use the map! (Yes, we know about GPS. Before we left the driveway, he was already arguing with it.) It didn’t take long before we hit the Oklahoma line and only a little down the road, you can begin to pick up on the western air of the land. We were excited.

Ah, but somewhere along the way I missed a turn (and where was MY map reader?) putting us 20 miles out of the way. At first DH was tense, then accepted we had no deadline to speak off and relaxed. I was glad to have missed the turn as the mistake took us through some lovely Oklahoma hills. It took us through the hometown “spot” that was Maria Tallchief’s birthplace. (She was an Osage prima ballerina.) The road also took us through Hominy where Cha Tullis has his art studio and where the Fred Drummond home is. Sadly, the home was not open that day, but we did walk the grounds. This is a lovely home built in 1905 by a Scottish immigrant who became a successful rancher. The name Drummond might be familiar to those who read and watch Dee Drummond.

 

 

On one of our earliest trips west, we ran into a swampy refuge that was the Salt Flats in the Panhandle, a  home to migrating birds. We got out and walked some of the areas; some were closed due to nesting and the state did not want the birds disturbed. Over the years, the area has been developed more, and we searched it out. This time the marshlands were totally dried up.

The only birds sighted were a killdeer and some sandpipers. However, new to us were pelicans at the small lake’s dam. Wow, they were interesting to watch.

 

Here in our tromping around, we picked up stick tights or what DH called sand burs. Tiny and sharp and biting, these were like little bitty cockle burrs. They hurt and we found them all the way along down the road during the trip then in our shoe strings, shoe bottoms, car carpets, etc.  

 

This day we noticed how the trees all leaned in from the south where the infamous south wind blew them every day that they grew. The country roads were busy with farm trucks,  harvesting machinery, and  tractors working fields and semis moving cattle. The air was dusty. Farmers were feeding America. Also the wild flowers were gorgeous. Most things had died out but the common sunflower was prolific. Being born in Kansas where the sunflower is the state flower, I never tired of seeing them. They would stretch for miles.

 

We pushed on through the Panhandle to sleep at Guymon, Oklahoma..