Oklahoma Museums

We spent several days with friends in Fayetteville. Around lots of talking and catching up, with their help we completed a bunch of errand and small repairs. Now we’re in Oklahoma City. The first place we visited was the Oklahoma City Memorial as a remembrance of the bombing of in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. The bombing killed 168 people including many children who were in a day care in the building. The memorial has an infinity pool along with bronze, stone, and glass chairs with the names of those who died listed on each one.

Red Earth Museum & Gallery isn’t a big museum, but there is always something to learn.  The story that goes with this totem pole is interesting. The philanthropist, Fred Jones, had planned to fly to Alaska. His wife had a premonition of danger and asked him to cancel his trip. The flight went on without him and crashed killing his friend Oklahoma icon Will Rogers.

My favorite museum of all time is the Museum of Osteotomy (or just the bone museum). It is just fascinating to see the bones of all these different animals. The museum shows you groups of similar animals together like these antelope, gazelle, and cattle. Loved the horns. Some look like hairdo’s while others are corkscrews.

Apes…

Some displays gave interesting facts. From one of their signs “Elephant skulls are massive with a large nasal opening sinking deep into the skull. Due to their strange appearance, these skulls were once the source for the legend of the mythical Cyclops.”

If you click on this picture you can read the sign. I’m not repeating it here.

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History was our last museum and by far the biggest. It’s one of those museums that are so big that it’s a bit too much. There were many things fossil creatures I didn’t know existed plus lots of creepy dead animals in jars. The skull of this Pentaceratops is the largest land vertebrate skull in the world.

Stupid Stuff in Oklahoma

Since I like the stupid stuff like the balls of twine, I made John drive to several of them here. One was closed. One was supposed to be the world’s largest Indian mound but turned out to be recently made (but it was a large mound). This is me with James Garner in his hometown of Norman. Plus, I just liked this picture of the statue in profile along with the street name.

In honor of Halloween... Very cool!

We’re heading to state parks and such. I’m not sure when we’ll be on the internet again.

Wear and Tear in Petit Jean

Last time we were in Petit Jean State Park  it was a lot wetter. The waterfalls were plentiful and big. This time was easier for hiking and had some great views.

One of the big things the area is known for is turtle rocks. Turtle rocks are Leizengon structures. The porous sandstone allows water to flow through. Iron concentrated in veins and is harder than the sandstone so iron patterns are revealed over time.

  

The problem is that the iron surface can’t survive thousands of people walking through the area. The light areas in this picture are where the brown iron has worn off. While there is a sign saying keep off the rocks, the sign was almost at the end of the area. Plus, there really isn’t a fixed path down these rocks so people wander through and damage a large area.

The park also has pictographs. There are actually quite a few pictographs but they are so faded it’s hard to find them and see the entire shape. I found out that taking pictures make the art clearer but I hope that doesn't damage the pictograph. No one knows what these shapes really mean.  What do you see in these?

Oh, and all this picture taking is either wearing out my camera or my memory card.  We visited Petit Jean’s grave, saw spectacular views from an overlook, saw more pictographs, and walked through the Bear Cave area while taking plenty of pictures. They all seemed to have disappeared from the memory card. I did some reformatting of the card so we’ll see if it is fixed now. This overlook was from the next day.

A stick bug that John found on the RV.

Little Rock Central High School

We’re in Little Rock Arkansas now. As soon as we got to the campground, I was hurrying John to get in the car to go on a tour of a brewery I found online. It said the tour today (Sunday) was the last for a week. We rushed into town to find that the brewery closed and the building now has a bakery! Ah, traveling life means changes. Since we were already downtown we visited the capital and Little Rock Central High School. 

Good thing we visited on Sunday. We couldn’t find any public parking around the capital. We ended up parking in reserved spots for the media (like NPR, etc.). The capital was basically empty except for a few of us tourists wandering around. That made it easier to see.

Little Rock Central High School is both a national park and a working high school. Again, it was nice to be at the high school on a Sunday so no students were there. The national park visitor center gave us a good history of the times and events at the school. The basics…in 1954 the Supreme Court overturned “separate but equal” laws with Brown v. Board of Education. That meant desegregation for schools. In 1957, Little Rock’s school board decided to gradually integrate the schools. The students known now as the “Little Rock Nine” were the first black students to enter the formerly all-white high school. The governor disagreed and called out both the Arkansas National Guard to keep the black students out (pretending this was for their safety) and also asked white citizens to protest the integration plan. There were crowds every day with the national media including the fairly new TV news filming everything. It took President Eisenhower bringing in federal troops to force the desegregation required by law.

What gets me was the bravery required by those nine. They had to handle a year of abuse (the students were verbally and physically abused by white students even after they finally got in the school door). They had to take the abuse but not answer it. One black student got upset and responded in a very limited way and she ended up being expelled. Their parents had to fully support the students. They had to be presentable at all times to represent their race. And, they had to be good students to pass the courses under such an environment.  All this and they were just young high school students. Wow!

John liked the education center for the national park. The gas station was an unofficial media center for the press who called in their stories from their public phone.

The campground is on a river. The woods were filled with French mulberry.

This is from my morning walk.

Memphis

On the way to Memphis we stopped at one of those “ball of twine” places. This one was the Kentucky Stonehenge. It’s not to scale, but it is made from rock (some of the replica stonehenges are built of other materials). Can you imagine having this in your yard?  I wonder if they do some type of druid rituals at summer solstice?

We stayed across the Mississippi river at an RV park that we visited before. It’s fun to watch the barges travel up and down the river. Given all the rain lately, not only barges are moving down the river but whole trees. There was a steady stream of large branches and trees moving down the river. This picture shows both the front of a large barge (a group of 20 barges with one tug boat) and a tree or large branch in the water.

  

We visited a metal museum. It had a combination of modern works along with old metalwork.

 Elmwood Cemetery is the oldest (established in 1852) cemetery in town. With all the cemeteries we’ve visited, we’re still learning new things. There weren’t any graves with stones or money. This one had a different type of gravestone called a cradle. Apparently this was a popular style in this area during the 1890’s or so. This particular group has a smaller “cradle” inside that was for a baby that had died but most cradle gravestones were for adults. 

Finally, we had to have barbecue while we were in Memphis. Cozy Corner would be described as a real dive, but it’s listed on yelp as the best place for barbecue in town.  Loved it!

Bourbon Trail

The Bourbon Trail in Kentucky is not exactly a trail, but group of 10 different bourbon distilleries that are open for tours and tastings. Many people visit the area and tour all of these distilleries over several days. That is too much bourbon for us. Actually, I don’t like bourbon, but hey, I’ll try it.

 A few years ago we went to Woodford Reserve (Frankfort Kentucky). This time we went to Jim Beam. It’s the biggest producer and there are tours leaving every ½ hour with big groups of people. The pictures are showing the liquors after distillation and the packing line. After the tour, you have a choice of 2 out of 19 different bourbons to taste.  

We also visited the Barton 1792 distillery, which isn’t part of the official Bourbon Trail, but a terrific place to visit with small groups that allowed for more questions and discussion. We learned several interesting things here. As the bourbon is stored, ~2% of the ethanol leaks through the barrel every year. The ethanol and moisture in the air feeds a certain type of black fungus. The mold covers the warehouses and even the trees in the area. Apparently, the law used to find moonshine stills by looking for black trees like this.

Another interesting point was the warehouses for aging are incredibly dangerous for fires. Some have sprinklers, but really it won’t stop anything from burning if a fire starts. The warehouses are built as far apart as possible so a fire will “only” take out a single warehouse instead of spreading to other buildings.

Another cool tour was Kentucky Cooperage which makes the barrels for the bourbon.  No pictures are allowed, so all I have is a picture of incoming staves used for the barrels. Finally, we visited a Trappist monk abbey where we bought bourbon fudge.

Big Bone Lick

Big Bone Lick is a park with salt and sulfur springs. I never knew these existed, but these springs have attracted animals who wanted the salt from the springs since way back during the ice ages. The area was a marsh, so many animals would get caught and eventually their bones fossilized. Most of the marsh area and springs are now gone, but a couple of places still remain.  The springs have a white area from the salt along with the smell of sulfur. Apparently snakes don’t get stuck in the marsh; they just skim across the top. 

 

When explorers found the area in 1739, the area was covered in bones. Lewis and Clark came here during the early 1800’s to collect bones for President Jefferson. Apparently tons of bones from this area are displayed in American and European museums. Now there aren't any fossils at the park you can see on the surface. However, the park also has a small museum with displays of some of the fossils along with Native American remains like arrowheads. 

Just for a stupid story that might not all be true…a water tower was built first for a mall in Florence Kentucky. They advertised the mall with a sign that said Florence Mall.  But, since the mall wasn’t built yet it seemed like false advertising. So they changed it to say Florence Y’all so they didn’t need to pay for the whole thing to be repainted.  Everyone liked it so much that they never repainted it when the mall was finally built.

Caesar Creek and Fort Ancient

Fifteen years ago, there was a brood of cicadas that hatched where we lived (which means that they will come back in 2 years to NW Ohio). The bugs were everywhere. They would hit you as you walked or land on or around you (which was pretty startling). At work I remember the maintenance department had to clean the water filters every hour since the cicadas would get into the cooling tower. It was vacation time, so we searched for some place that wasn’t within the area of this hatching. Somehow we found the hidden gem of Caesar’s Creek.

The coolest part of Caesar Creek is that you are allowed to collect fossils with just a free permit required. Millions of years ago the area had been underwater. When they built a dam to form the lake, they found the spillway area was full of fossils from the sea. We saw families and even a bus of kids collecting fossils. You’re not allowed to use tools, so it’s just walking around and picking up rocks. The size of the rocks are limited to the palm of your hand, but you can collect a box of them if you want. This one was too big to take but cool to see!

  

A nearby park had Indian mounds called Fort Ancient.  It was never a fort but was probably more ceremonial. There are almost 3.5 miles of earthen embankments which was built ~2,000 years ago over 400 years by the Hopewell culture (which also built the Newark mounds).

Best Pizza in the World!

OK, “best pizza” is all subjective. We lived in Strasburg Ohio for around 12 years.  Kraus Pizza is at several locations in the area and is always great.  But the best, we think, is in Strasburg.  We called for pizza every Friday for years.  Delicious pizza from Kraus was used to celebrate birthdays, holidays, and even scout parties.

John realized we’d be driving along the highway by Strasburg so he figured we could drive thru and pick up a pizza. Chuck, the owner, is a super wonderful guy.  Even though we hadn’t been there in 5 years, he came out from the kitchen for a hug. I even got a free T-shirt to celebrate. Yes, John and I both enjoyed the pizza!!!

We needed to do some shopping plus wanted a cheap place to stop on our way to the next stop. A Walmart provided both of these.  This time there were 5 of us RV’ers in the parking lot all night though there were only 3 when I took the picture.  Life is wonderful as we enjoyed the full moon and life at Walmart.

While we were visiting in Akron it started to hail.  The nights have been very cold and an extra blanket was pulled out. Besides the cold, RV and state parks start closing up in October. In November, hunting season starts so they don’t recommend hiking. We’re fleeing south now!!!

Our Grandchild Ava

The best part of our visit to Akron was seeing John’s son Johnny, his wife Jen, and their daughter Ava. We missed Ava during our last visit, so we hadn’t seen her in 5 years.  Since then she’s learned how to talk, walk, read, and all kinds of things!

Johnny is a chef, so we enjoyed several incredibly delicious meals including steak with a terrific béarnaise sauce for our anniversary.  Ava served us a delightful imaginary meal with John gamely seated at the small table.

We tried to visit a marble museum, but it was closed. Instead we saw a local antique shop / junk store with rooms of neat stuff. Loved the TV display!

We hiked in a nearby park with the fall colors surrounding us.

One of the highlights for me was an area where birds will land on your outstretched hands.  People have been feeding the birds here for so long, you don’t actually need to have food with you anymore. I felt like Mary Poppins.

We talked, hiked, played games, and raced. A terrific visit!