On the road. Houston to Bartlesville

Well, we have our Dodge Grand Caravan (no Bluetooth) and we're packed and ready to go.

You can see that Doreen is especially eager to get on the road. Lulu, maybe not so much:

We're all game, though.

We got on the road about 10:30 - later than I had hoped, but earlier than I expected.

We've not really driven long distances with The Dog, and she sat like this almost the entire day:

There is a lot of nothing in North Texas. This is at the Buccee's in Ennis, TX. If you are not from Texas, you may not know what Buccee's is. That's ok. It is a big gas station with clean bathrooms. People love them.

Lulu enjoyed the break:

We crossed that old Red River.

We knew we would get here Sooner or later.

We opted for the "avoid highways" option from the Google Lady, and she took us through Welletka. It looks a lot like this.

And this:

But soon enough we got to Bartlesville (right around 8:00 PM. Later than I had hoped, but it's not like we had plans, anyway) and we stayed at one of the reasons for the trip. The Inn at Price Tower, a Frank Lloyd Wright designed office building with some hotel rooms.

Double decker rooms, with VERY low ceilings.

After a nice sleep, we went out the next day to wander around Bartlesville. It is a cute little town.

Nice park, with a discovery well reconstructed:

and an old Railroad Depot. It's tiny!

Then back to the hotel. Tulsa today, back here tonight.

Comments

Home again, home again.

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Wyoming. Where family has to take you in!

I lived in Kemmerer, Wyoming in 1978, working in a coal mine. Back then, when you entered the state, the sign said "Welcome to BIG Wonderful Wyoming!" It is a big, big state, and much of it is wonderful. I have fond memories of the place. Now, my oldest brother lives there with his wife, (Not in Kemmerer, but in Lander, which seems to be much more civilized) and it was just great to see them. Ah, but the sign. Now it looks like this: Let's zoom in a little: Personally, I liked the old sign better. A lot of Wyoming looks like this: That is a loading silo for the US's second biggest coal mine - Black Thunder, originally owned by ARCO, now by Arch Coal. Different mine, different technique than the one I worked it. But just incredibly huge. You drive through the mine and it just goes on forever. But there is a lot of this, too: We stopped at the Tourist Bureau in Casper to get some state maps (yes, we have been using hardcopy maps, our atlas, as well as The Google Lady o...

The Revised Trip starts soon

As we all know, there has been a change of plans. The change was instigated by a pandemic the likes of which the US has not seen in a hundred years. Over 180,000 dead as I write this, and the infection mechanism still seems to be up for (a little) debate. Aerosol transmission, especially fatal if you have underlying conditions. So we stopped all our plans we had made (see below) and now have made new plans. The new plans are a driving trip, where we would like to believe that we will have better control over our environment. We are even renting a car so as to eliminate the stress of having to worry about charging up the battery on the Tesla. Our plans now go something like this: September 16, drive to Bartlesville, OK and spend two nights at the Inn at Price Tower , a Frank Lloyd Wright building that has been turned into a hotel. Head north to Hutchinson, KS to visit both a salt mine , and the Apollo 13 command module, Odyssey . Then to Grand Island, NE, where we...

The Year of Months

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