Life on the High Plains

 Happy 47th Anniversary to us!  Just two young kids who nobody thought would make it.  I guess they were all wrong! He still looks at me like that. He's my best friend and my entire life!

One place I really wanted to visit on our recent trip to Tulsa was the historic Greenwood District where the Tulsa Race Massacre or Black Wall Street Massacre took place in 1921. I'm ashamed to say that I never heard of this massacre until my brother blogged about it several years ago.  Read Yogi's post by clicking this link  to learn the story. Why, why, why has this historic event never been taught in school?  It's shameful.  Is it not true that "those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it"?  There are things going on in our country now that makes me think many have forgotten the horrible history of our country.  The museum pointed out that since something like 2020 Oklahoma has included the Tulsa Race Massacre in the public school curriculum.  I don't know why it took almost a hundred years, but okay. They've put together a beautiful historical center that brings the massacre to life and directly affects your heart and soul (at least m...

 During our recent trip to Oklahoma my brother took us up to Woolaroc which is the ranch getaway created by oilman Frank Phillips in 1925.  It was a windy day but the skies were bright and beautiful. It's a 3,700 acre ranch that not only has a variety of wildlife, but a magnificent collection of Western art and artifacts. I especially enjoyed driving through the herd of bison since I won't be returning to work at Yellowstone anymore. These are definitely a different species of bison than those that reside in Yellowstone because they were much smaller. I was glad to see some red dogs although these must have been born several months ago.  The red dogs would just now be hitting the ground in YNP. There were several varieties of deer. And even a ram on top of the rocks. This stone building houses the museum.  The mosaic entryway was stunning. As an artist I have complete awe for a painting this detailed. The ranch has very unique frames on most of the art.  The fra...

The next morning we found a few geocaches in the Kansas state park and then headed further east and south to Keystone State Park near Tulsa.  The Oklahoma state park campground's check in time is 5:00 p.m. which is about three hours later than the usual check-in time at campgrounds so we were wasting time along the way. Finally we decided to go ahead to the campground and if someone was in our site until 5:00 we'd just park and hang out somewhere.  Luckily it was empty when we arrived. Another beautiful state park with lots of trees.  This one was almost full the day we arrived probably because of the eclipse which was the next day. The only thing I didn't like about this campground was its lack of hiking trails in the park.  There were plenty nearby, but only a short one in the park that we could find.  It didn't really matter though because my beloved hubbie was nursing a bad muscle strain and he wasn't up to hiking anyway. Once we spotted this guy in the road...

Recently we decided to hook up that fifth wheel trailer and take it out for the first camping trip of the season.  We usually head west into the Rocky Mountains, but this time we headed east to the Great Plains. Instead of taking the interstate we decided to take some of the back roads.  Some of them weren't very well maintained and nearly rattled our teeth out. The wind was blowing like crazy!  The fire danger was really high and at one point the road was closed so we had to take a detour.  The detour took it through a dairy cow lot and I wish I'd taken a photo of it, but they had hundreds of crates for the bull calves who are raised for veal.  You'd never eat veal again if you could see how those baby cows are treated.  The crates are roughly 2'x2', the calves are tethered so they can't move, they aren't allowed any social interaction, and they're feed only milk so that their meat is tender.  Beyond cruel--stop eating veal! We had a tail wind most of...