Ever Hear of Bartlesville?

We are clearing out of Oklahoma City.  While we could blame the heat it really would not be a good reason because there is nowhere we could go that is not just as hot.  We would be thrilled if we could just have some days below triple-digit.  But we are just going to settle for a campground that is a little more friendly to the budget.

A few hours from OKC is a little town in the northeast corner of the state named Bartlesville.  We'll go from the dusty plains to the distant foothills of the Ozark Mountains and what the locals call "Green Country".

Now, if you are in the oil business you probably, well maybe, have heard of this town.  Like Cyndee's and my home town of Borger, Tx, it pretty much exists because of oil.

Bartlesville 1910

The connection is actually even tighter.  The driving force behind the oil in both towns is Phillips 66.  Our home of Borger is the oil industry's home of the world's largest inland refinery owned by Phillips 66 and Bartlesville was the headquarters for Phillips 66 until they merged with Conoco and moved to Houston, Tx in 2002.

Everything you see is Phillips 66

Frank Phillips and his successors were sports enthusiasts.  These big buildings in downtown are not only executive and administrative offices but also house an Olympic-size swimming pool, basketball courts, gymnasiums and running tracks.  Phillips had its own semi-pro basketball team at one time and has for a long time been a huge sponsor of swimming and diving competition around the world.

John started working for Phillips in 1981 in one of their chemical plants and then was transferred to Bartlesville in 1984.  We only lived in Bartlesville for four years but lived a significant chapter of our life there.  This is where both of our children were born.  Although just barely as our youngest was only three weeks old when John took a job in Georgia.

John worked at the research center out on the west side of Bartlesville.

There is one building in town that is not Phillips 66 owned or occupied.  Frank Lloyd Wright built the Price Tower Arts Center.  It is the only high rise every realized by Wright and it opened in 1956.  We never got to go inside the tower but heard that there are no right angles/square corners anywhere in the building.

Frank Phillips was also a showman.  He built an amazing ranch just outside of town and named it Woolaroc, which stands for woods, lake and rock.  This ranch is where Phillips would entertain dignitaries and forge business deals.  It's now open to the public as a nature preserve and museum.  The museum houses a massive gun collection and western and native american art.

Woolaroc Museum

Ranch house where movie stars, politicians and Arab Kings were guests.

For our stay in Bartlesville we found a campground that was a seriously scary place back when we lived here in the 80's.  But it now has new owners and they have put a lot of work into the property and have it looking pretty good.  Riverside RV Resort and Campground is going to be our base camp for the next week.

Riverside RV in Bartlesville, OK 

Although we are killing time waiting for our appointment at the factory to get the blow-out damage repaired on the camper, we do have a purpose that will fill our days.  We have both been doing genealogy work on our families and John's family has a ton of history in the northeast corner of Oklahoma.  His great grandfather was a U.S. Marshal here when this was known as an Indian Territory, one of the terminus' of the Trail of Tears.  His great grandfather married a Cherokee woman and petitioned to become a member of the Cherokee tribe but was turned down three times before finally being accepted on his fourth attempt.  We are going to visit old homesteads and graveyards in Collinsville, Claremore, Inola and more.  Plus, there is still plenty of family in the area that we will touch base with.

After we get this week under our belt we'll move into Kansas and find someplace to hang out close to the factory.  Manhattan is looking pretty interesting.

More Oklahoma City

We ended yesterday scouting out things to do and see today.  There are so many things in Oklahoma City to choose from that I did not expect to be talking about going to the Museum of Osteology.  That's right, we are going to go see bones.

But surprise, surprise this place turned out to be way more interesting than I would have ever expected.  Seems that the proprietor developed a knack for assembling and articulating bones he found in the woods as a kid.  That interest stayed with him into adulthood and now he is sought out by museums and science institutions world-wide.  His collection in OKC is the largest in the world.

The museum is not just big in the number of exhibits but the size of the exhibits too.
That's a full-size giraffe in the foreground, Humpback Whale in the center and West Indian Manatee above the whale

Just as impressive as the big exhibits were the tiny ones.  One exhibit has a hummingbird skeleton (Ruby Throated) as if caught in mid-flight.  It even has feathers in place at the tips of its wings and tail. Really remarkable looking.

The museum is arranged in several themes.  Such as locomotion, species, pathology, etc.  In the locomotion exhibit there was this display of a lion taking down an antelope.

Our original plan was to only spend a short time at the Osteology Museum but more than a couple of hours had gone by before we knew it.  It was past time for some lunch so we grabbed a quick bite on our way to the next stop, the site of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The visitors to this blog are diverse.  While about half are from the U.S., the rest are from all over.  Russia, Europe, South America, New Zealand, Australia, and more.  I'm not sure how many know what the OKC bombing is so to be polite I'll give a short synopsis.

On April 19, 1995 two gutless cowards - McVeigh and Nichols committed an act of domestic terrorism by setting off a truck bomb of diesel fuel and fertilizer in front of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma city.  The explosion completely destroyed the building and took the lives of 168 people, including children in a first floor day care center.  There were another 680 injured and 324 other buildings destroyed or damaged.  Both perpetrators were caught quickly, one has since been executed and the other is spending the rest of his life in a maximum security prison.

As described, the damage was horrific, unsurpassed until the twin towers on 9/11.  In 2000 the memorial was completed and dedicated by President Clinton. It encompasses the full city block that the federal building was on, most of it outdoors.  For us, the most poignant part of the memorial were the empty chairs, one for each person killed.  Small chairs are for the children.

Reflecting pool with a stone monolith on each end, known as the Gates of Time.
One marked 9:01 and the other 9:03, the moment before the tragedy and the
time when we knew that things were changed forever.

Empty chairs of stone and steel.  One for each life lost with small chairs representing the children. 

We paid a visit to the indoor memorial/gift shop but it was getting late and they were about to close so our time was short.  We would have liked to go back outside and take more pictures but once again it was so hot that we were thoroughly wilted and had to seek the air conditioning of Big Gulp and be satisfied with a driving tour of downtown OKC.

We are going to head back to the rig and start preparing for a change of scenery tomorrow.  We'll see what we can do about getting moved in the direction of the Kansas factory and less pricey campgrounds.

Bricktown and Around Town

All of July has been brutally hot for our 2016 stops in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and now Oklahoma.  We thought starting out for Bricktown early this morning and catching a water taxi first thing would be the cooler way to go.  We were mistaken, it did not even cool off below 90 degrees last night.  Oh well.  It is as cool as it is going to be so off we go.

As mentioned in the last post, Bricktown is a revitalized industrial section of the old city (Oklahoma City).  So instead of belching smoke and pumping out manufactured goods it now feeds throngs and quenches the thirst of pub crawlers with enough shopping for anyone to drop from.  A navigable canal winds its way through the district going past all the restaurants, bars and shops.  With the name "water taxi" we had expectations we would be able to get on and off at points of our choosing.  But like the hope for cooler temperatures it was not to be either.

Water taxis at the Bricktown canal.

No matter, the ride will take us past most of the businesses and let us map out things we want to come back to.  All we have to do is sit back, relax and enjoy the scenery.

OKC has taken a dilapidated, old industrial complex and turned it
into an attractive and interesting entertainment complex.

In addition to all the commercial properties, the developers have included public spaces with outdoor art and monuments featured prominently along the canal.  While there are murals and fountains, my favorites are the bronze sculptures.  The theme of the sculptures is the Oklahoma land rush.  Fifty thousand people lined up for a race (rush) to get their piece of two million acres.  At exactly 12:00 pm on April 22, 1889 potential settlers bolted head-long to the west from a point in central Oklahoma.  It was a wild scene of horses, buggies, buckboards, and covered wagons streaking across a road-less plain to stake their claim.  The artist(s) have captured some of the drama of that famous moment.

Taking pictures from the water taxi limited my ability to optimize the lighting
but even in silhouette you can see the drama of trying to get these animals to cross water.

The old and the new.  An 1899 scene framed by the modern skyline of the city.

Some of the settlers started with little more than the clothes on their back.

Some of the sculptures have an added interest in that they have the faces of notable people.  One of the wagon drivers is a self portrait of sorts as he has the face of the artist.  Others are notable or famous Oklahoman's such as Will Rogers.  The operators of the water taxi do a good job of narrating as they go along and will point out others as well as give the background on monuments along the way.

The canal also has some resident ducks.  Normally this wouldn't be something I would spend time writing about but there is one duck that has a particular "hair-do" that caught my attention.

I'm not the only one that this duck has caught the attention of.  The water taxi tour guides have dubbed him "The Trump Duck".

In a previous post I said something about going to Sonic Drive-In for dinner.  These drive-ins are all over the south but having grown up in Texas I always had the impression that this burger mecca was a Texas thing.  You could barely throw a rock without hitting a Sonic Drive-In with over 940 stores in the state.  The next most numerous stores is in the state where the company was founded, Oklahoma, at 275.  I have recently learned that it is not just a southern thing either with locations in 45 states.

Headquarters for a tasty treat maker.

The above photo was taken from the water taxi on the Bricktown canal.  Sonic invested in a completely new structure and moved its headquarters operation here.  And yes, there is a a place to order a corn dog and Blast in there.

We spotted a Louisiana kitchen while on the water taxi and made a bee-line to it as soon as the canal tour was over.  We were not disappointed in our choice, it was an extensive menu and both our choices were delicious.  From there we moved on through a labyrinth of shops ending at a Bass Pro Shop.

For those that are fans of 1980's rock bands, Oklahoma City is the home of the Flaming Lips.  They have been described as a band with a psychedelic rock sound coupled with space rock lyrics.  Go figure.  Anyway, our kids liked them back when they were growing up and when we came upon this road (an alley really) named for them we just had to take a picture and send it to them.

This alley is right in the heart of Bricktown and borders a beach-sand volley ball court and outdoor dining area as well as all the shopping in every direction.

It's unbearably hot now so we are getting back in Big Gulp and going to scout out things to do tomorrow.

Decision Time

The end of July 2016 is at hand.  We've been "home" for nearly a month (see Change of Address) and our plans for summer travels have evolved significantly.  The idea of heading to higher altitudes for cooler air after a family tour through Texas is off the table.  Seems the great recession of 2008 has finally released its grip on RV'ing and campgrounds are booked solid, at least where it is not scorching hot.  Regardless, we've got hitch-itch and are looking to move on.

After a couple of false starts over a two week period, one morning we get up and everything clicks.  We are hitched up and pulling out of our parking lot with hook-ups.  You know, we never did have any neighbors the whole month we were here.  One guy dropped a trailer and left it for about 10 days but never hooked it up, never occupied it.  Another person started to back in late one night during a thunder storm but changed their mind and pulled away.  It was a pretty bleak place after all.

Even though we were pulling out we had not decided where to go.  As we approached the one intersection in town that will take you either west to New Mexico or east to Oklahoma we were still trying to decide what to do.  If we go west we may spend all our time moving from campground to campground that have a one night opening, if we go east, getting a spot in a blistering hot campground will be no problem.  Being able to stay in one spot for more than 24 hours did it, we turned east.

Borger, TX is interestingly located.  The road doesn't go through here to anywhere.  You only get here if this is your destination.  But, once you are here you are equally far from Dallas, TX to the south or Denver, CO. to the north at approximately 7 hours each.  Or, Albuquerque, NM to the west or Oklahoma City, OK to the east at about 4.5 hours.  We're headed for a campground we are familiar with on the west side of Oklahoma City so our travel time will be right at four hours.  We are not going to avoid hot pavement today as it is already well into the 90's at ten in the morning.

Our objective for the day is Mustang Run RV Park.  We stayed in this park almost three years ago on our initial drive west.  It was brand new back then, in fact it wasn't even officially opened.  The RV pads were finished but the office/club house was a couple months shy of being occupy-able.  But they were taking people pulling in off of I-40 like us and had a decent rate so we stayed a couple of days.

The place is finished now and the office/clubhouse/pool is pretty fancy schmancy.  Cyndee and I care nothing about RV parks except for their location, quality of their RV pads and hook-ups.  The only reason to go into the office is to register and pay for our site.  This place has pulled out all the stops as far as clubhouses go and they have jacked up their rates accordingly.  Forty nine bucks a night for a campground that is right up against an interstate highway with heavy truck traffic all night long is not my idea of a good deal.  But we are here so we'll take a couple of nights and look for something else to use as a base-camp for exploring Oklahoma City.

I know I sound like a broken record but man, is it hot!  At least when we were in the Texas panhandle the 3,500 foot elevation kept the air dry.  But now that we have dropped down off the caprock the humidity is up, pushing heat indexes to a place Cyndee doesn't even want to know about.

Heat be damned, we're going exploring.  We have known about OKC's old part of town, "Bricktown", for decades.  I-40 essentially passes right over it as the interstate transects the city.  On numerous trips that both Cyndee's and my family took since I-40 was completed in the 60's we have looked down into Bricktown as we jostled (this part of the interstate is always in need of serious pot-hole repair) across this elevated portion of the highway.

Bricktown, near where the canal terminates at the Bass Pro Shop

Today, for the first time, we are not passing over.  We are coming in under the interstate and going to do the main drag.  And we are not the only ones, there is plenty of cruising going on this late weekday afternoon.

Bricktown was originally an industrial center that bloomed at the turn of the twentieth century.  But like many industrial districts in the U.S., it did not survive modern economy, beginning with the Great Depression.  The district fell into disrepair, most of it becoming completely derelict.  A visionary mayor in the 90's convinced citizens to approve taxes to revitalize the district.  A minor league baseball park and navigable canal were completed in '98 and '99 respectively and museums, bars, restaraunts, shops, and hotels followed.  Its a vibrant place now with throngs of people.

Canal lined with restaurants and bars. 

Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, home of the
Oklahoma City Dodgers, a Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers

Having done the main drag and scoped out our plan for what we want to see and do tomorrow at Bricktown, we head to an Oklahoma original, Sonic Drive In for supper.  There is one just across the street from the campground and the sun should be down by the time we get there.

Stay Flexible

Since starting our fulltiming adventures in 2012 there is one thing that we have learned that is fundamental to being happy - be flexible!  Sure, you have to make plans and have a general idea of what you want to do and where you want to be at any given time, just don't carve any of those plans in stone.  So far this whole summer has been one change in plan after another, we have been practicing our flexibility skills to the max.

It started with our blowouts (two of them) on the trailer at the very beginning of our trek west from Georgia to Texas.  Our planned layover in New Orleans had to be skipped because the downtime for repairs used up the days we had set aside for touring The Big Easy.  However,  there is body damage that will need to be addressed and will need a trip to the factory to be done.  That is an unplanned trip to Kansas.  A call to the service manager revealed that we can't get in until August 22, almost two months from now.  So we'll just duct tape the loose sheet metal down and go about our travels until then.  But then again, maybe not.

The last post ended with mentioning something about a tooth ache.  Within a few days it was painfully clear that this was an issue that was not going away without professional help.  So it's off to the dentist for John where he learns that his tooth ache is a raging infection from an abscessed wisdom tooth.  The next ten days were spent taking antibiotics to knock the infection down so the tooth could be extracted.

As scheduled, we arrived for the tooth extraction.  John to get the tooth pulled, Cyndee to drive home because the dentist said that John would be in no condition to drive.  But before we began, the dentist repeatedly asked John if he wasn't sure that he wanted to see an oral surgeon instead.  He said that a wisdom tooth could be a real challenge to remove without sedation and all he had was Novocaine injections.   Being without dental insurance, a $200 extraction was way more attractive than a multi-thousand dollar oral surgery.  So John told the dentist to get to pulling.  Poor choice.

Despite doubling the number of numbing injections they just were not effective at getting to all the nerves affected by that giant tooth deep in the jaw.  With clamps attached, the dentist would begin pulling on the tooth and as if a marionette string were attached, John's leg would go straight up in the air.  The dentist backed out and said he would go no further, he was calling an oral surgeon in Amarillo and setting up an emergency extraction.

Amarillo is an hour's drive away and within two hours there is a gaping whole where there once was a wisdom tooth.  John was thoroughly doped up, doesn't remember getting home and feeling pretty good until everything finally wore off a couple days later.

Thinking that the tooth would be extracted and that we would hang out a couple of days and then hit the road again was pure folly.  Doing simple things, like breathing, was painful.  Doing something like bending over would make chrome gnats appear.  John was in no shape to prep the rig for travel or drive.  Time to be flexible.

A couple of days turned into four and four turned into eight, soon the end of July was approaching.  We enjoyed the extra time with family and friends but day after day it was 100+ degrees.  The heat was wearing on us and we started looking to Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado for some mountain-cooled air where we could hang out until our appointment at the factory in Kansas.

After hours of searching on-line it was clear that we would not be going to cooler climes.  There were no campgrounds that had a space available big enough to hold our rig with more than one or two nights open.  We needed three weeks.  We get to exercise our "be flexible" muscle again.

Change of Address

The first day of July 2016 finds us in the town that we both grew up in.  Our time here was from the mid-1950's until the mid-1980's with a short break for being away for school and the first job after graduation (which was only 175 miles away).  The next thirty years were in Georgia with a brief, 4-year period in Oklahoma.  Borger was built and has continued to exist for one reason - oil.  It is an oil town through and through with the worlds largest inland refinery as its economic engine and pumping oil out of the ground a close second.  As the oil business has risen and fallen so has the town.  But the busts have outweighed the booms and the town is a little worse for the wear.  We remember when we were kids in school, the population hovered around 20,000 at times.  Now they are lucky if they can say that there are 12,000 residents.  Many of the refinery employees make the 50 mile commute from Amarillo every day to work.

No commute for us.  Our spot in the city park puts us close to everything, including a busy 4-lane lane road to the left and a huge rail switching yard on the other side of the road.  They start banging those tanker rail cars around at about 4:00 am.

If it were not for oil, ranching would be the dominate profession with the likes of the 6666 Ranch, Johnson Ranch, Crutch Ranch, and Arrington Ranch, to name a few, surrounding the community and occupying multiple counties.  There is a pretty good mix of hardhats and cowboy hats around.

Both our dad's started their families as oil men.  Cyndee's was a foreman in the refinery and mine a tool dresser on a drilling rig and later a pumper on leases.  Like the town, our families have seen loss and change.  Both of Cyndee's parents are gone and my dad.  My mother has remarried, 20-some years ago now and he is both a wearer of hard hat and cowboy hat.  They have built up a horse boarding operation as a side-business but it is now a full-time retirement occupation.

Mare and colt at the barn.

 The barn has become for us like the kitchen is for many families.  It is the gathering place.  Birthdays, holidays and just-for-the-heck-of-it days are all a reason to meet at the barn.  In fact, there was so much time being spent out there that a corner of the barn was set aside for a cantina.

An old fashioned cantina complete with wood burning stove.

Bar-B-Q's are not uncommon at the barn.

Head Honcho

Something new to the barn this year, miniature donkeys.
These guys will follow you around like a puppy dog.
They are a lot heavier but not much taller than a Great Dane.

Like I have been talking about the last several posts, it has been raining in copious amounts for months.  The panhandle has been a benefactor of this rain and the high desert has come alive.

The high desert in bloom.
Cottonwoods and flowers in early spring before the trees have put on leaves.

Hay is abundant this year.  We saw stacks like this all across
the state with hay fields almost ready for a second harvest.
It was not long ago that the drought was so bad that they were bringing
hay in from as far away as Montana.

One of the things we can always count on when returning to the panhandle - gorgeous sunsets!

Our time is up at the city park and we have been scouting someplace to stay that has full hookups and allows month-long stays.  Borger being the industrial town that it is, there are several RV parks in the area that were built with the work-camper in mind.  The town swells and shrinks with transient workers doing skilled labor such as welding and pipe-fitting.  Lucky for us we are in town when the plants were between turn-a-rounds or upgrades and we had choices.  Unfortunately, none of these choices included anyplace that could be taken for a garden or natural setting.  When our choice was made we only moved two blocks from our current location.  While it may have been close, it was starkly different from our city park setting.  We are now sitting on an aggregate of crumbled asphalt and gravel, adjacent to the rail switching yard I mentioned earlier.  An eight foot tall metal fence is all that separates us from a 10-rail wide switching yard that handles nothing but volatile hydrocarbons and hazardous chemicals.  Yikes!

It may be a parking lot next to a rail yard but we have full hook-ups and a clear shot at the satellites.

Panhandle sunsets can even make this place look good.

The 4th of July started out looking okay but as the day wore on the heat exceeded our limit for sitting on a blanket atop Texas red clay to wait for fireworks.  We stayed in and as it turned out it was probably good that we did since John ended up with a nasty wisdom tooth ache.

Hometown Bound

It is the last few days of June 2016 and with almost a week under our belts in Highland Village's Pilot Knoll Park it is time to move north.  There is not a whole lot of things we are interested in doing between Dallas and Borger when daytime highs are breaking 110 degrees.  If the weather were cooler we would stop in at Caprock Canyons State Park or Palo Duro Canyon State Park, beautiful places when the temperature is somewhere below a pizza oven.  July in the panhandle of Texas is a time to seek out things to do that minimize your time outdoors.  We are going to be spending time with family and friends as well as a 4th of July gathering.

Sticking with our strategy to minimize our risk for trailer tire failure we are getting out early and picking a layover town that gets us off the road by mid-day.  Doing this puts us in the tiny, dusty town of Vernon, TX.  Like many Texas towns it has a nice campground for a night's layover.  I think it is great that as we travel the back-roads of Texas that you rarely have to worry about not finding a campground wherever you are at the end of the day.  Some may be private campgrounds like ours tonight or they may be a city park or county park or fairground, but there is almost always something.

A nice flat, grassy park in Vernon, TX.  Vernon doesn't have much but this park is
conveniently located close to what it does have.

Vernon does have a Walmart, an RV'ers delight, and it is literally next door to the campground.

It was unusual for the wind to not be blowing in this part of the country but we took advantage of it and fully extended the awning to get a little bit of shade on the side of the rig and give the air conditioners as much help as possible.  It took awhile but we got cooled down and set up house keeping until we head for our hometown in the morning.  The satellite beam that DirecTV got us hooked up to in Waco was still working in Vernon so we had entertainment for the evening.  When we get to our next stop we'll have to call DirecTV again and get authorized for the Amarillo beam.

By the way, that is a pretty significant change since starting our fulltime adventure in 2012.  When we got the satellite system installed the only thing DirecTV offered was a fixed address service.  At that time you had a choice of using one of two addresses.  One was in New York and the other was in California.  The beam for these addresses were receivable coast-to-coast.  This was immensely convenient, no matter where you landed you just put up the dish a voila, 800 channels of high-def TV.  But the downside was that the local stations were always New York City (if you were on the New York service address or Los Angeles if on the California service address).  Another thing that got wonky was changing time zones.  As we went west for our National Park jobs in Arizona and Texas the programming for "prime time" shows were coming down from the satellite by East Coast time.  The 11:00 pm news was coming on at 8:00 pm when we were in Arizona (Arizona does not do daylight savings time). Plus, we were getting really tired of seeing commercials for nothing but Broadway plays.

But all that changed at some point.  DirecTV never made an announcement, I just happened to be reading a forum for satellite TV for RV'ers and saw a blurb where somebody said they were now able to call in and change their service address at will.  It seems that the competition, Dish TV, had a department focused on RV'ers and their unique needs and DirecTV decided that maybe they should accommodate this segment of the market too.  I immediately called the number given and was greeted by a friendly, RV-savvy person and in just a couple of minutes I was getting the beam for my location (we were in the Atlanta market at the time).  Since then we have been able to move, sometimes daily, and just pick up the phone to get a satellite feed specific to our location and time zone.  It's been great.

A new day has come and it is time to saddle up and get going.  Today's drive will only be three hours, an easy cruise without wind.  We pull into Borger without fanfare and head to our customary campground that is part of the city park.  This park is on an honor system, "pay a donation" campground.  There are ten spots and each has 30 amp electric and water with a three-day limit.  But things have deteriorated since our last stay.  It looks like some campers have homesteaded the place and several slots had either electric or water problems.  We finally ended up in a site that had good electric (although thirty amps will run only one A/C) but we had to run 75 feet of water hose and put a "Y" on our neighbor's connection to get any water.  That kind of distance through a water hose makes for low water pressure and with no sewer hookup that means we'll have to practice extreme water conservation by doing navy showers, minimizing using any dishes that would need to be washed (use disposable paper and plastic) and use bathrooms at gas stations to extend the time before having to hit the dump station.

For the moment we have family and friends to see.