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.

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Nebraska is a BIG state. Especially crosswise and on two lane roads

I think I mentioned below that we bought a Rand McNally road atlas for this trip. This is where it pays off. Doreen has been tracing our route with a yellow highlighter (I will post Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas later) so we can remember where we were. Here is the route through Nebraska: You may note that it ends in Chadron. That is where we ran out of daylight. We would not have run out of daylight had it not been for COVID19 and the Oglala Lakota. More on that later. But on out way from Kansas, we went through the geographical center of the lower 48 US states. See: It is just outside of Lebanon, Nebraska. and yes, that is a cedar tree. We took a self portrait: Then a nice lady asked if we wanted her to take our photo. We said, "Sure!" This is what we got: Of course, I took her photo, too. But not before taking a couple of photos of myself, first. (Thanks, Matt!) I am not sure I mentioned this below, but on the first leg of the trip, we listened to Charles Portis's book T...

Home again, home again.

It's always good to be home. We have never taken such a road trip before, and certainly never with a dog. That was an experience. She loved the long hikes in the mountains, didn't care for the car rides, especially the long one. We, too, experienced new things. We listened to a lot of books on tape (well, Audible), trying to match the words to the Landscape. So we started with True Grit by Charles Portis, set mostly in the Oklahoma Territory. One of my favorite books of all times, and it was read by Donna Tart. ( The Goldfinch , etc). Perfect book for the start of the trip, from Houston to Bartlesville. On the next two legs of the trip, to Hutchinson, Kansas and then up to Keystone, South Dakota, we listed to My Antonia by Will Cather. (pronounced, we learned, as an-tone-EEE-ah). A wonderful book for driving through Nebraska. And we were on the Willa Cather highway while doing so. As we drove into Wyoming, we listened to Rising from the Plains , by John McPhee. The story o...

Custer State Park, where we discovered that Lulu likes hiking but hates small log bridges.

Neither of us slept great on Sunday night, but we were up and ready to go with the dawn on Monday morning. I took with us some of my World Famous Roasted Coffee (this batch from Guatemala) hand grinded it and made us two moka pots to get started. A great way to start the day. It is really pretty here at the cabin. and, of course, there is this: One can look at that as an engineering marvel, but not sure what else. But we soon got to the trail head, and after a little confusion (which is very common for me), we started off. We were, indeed, there. The trail was very easy, except for the 16 creek crossings, most of which were easy for us, hard for The Dog. Lulu does not like log crossings. She doesn't like water, either, but she likes it more than log crossings. She would frequently just walk through the creek, up to her chest, to avoid the bridge. It was a great, fun, walk, though. Lots of mountain medows. And rock bluffs. We stopped occasionally to take a nice sip of cold water. T...

The Year of Months

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