Short trips, Big visits...

We've been skipping through several towns, cities and states as we slowly head in a north westerly direction towards Washington state.  We've tried to hit some areas that we've missed in prior trips, traveling State Roads mostly, staying in different towns & cities, each for a few days. since we are on a time schedule.  It's not a tight one, but one none the less.

Here are some fun highlights...

In Oklahoma we stayed in a couple of fun places, one, in Ardmore where we met up with a fellow who was selling some of his Mom's things, I bought a nice old oak dining chair from him.  We are shopping for some as we travel, to have with our table back home as we sold off all our previous dining furniture except for this small table that Jack refinished.  We now want miss-matched antique chairs to go around it and thought it would be fun to search them out along the way.  This was our first!  As we traveled out in the country to find him, we came across a beautiful homestead with quite a lovely collection of old trucks, windmill and other things decorating his yard.  I couldn't help but stop and take some pictures!

We then stayed in a lovely COE park in Skiatook Lake and used it as our base to visit Tulsa.  The first place on Jack's list to go see was the J.M. Davis Arms & Historical Museum,  in nearby Claremore, OK!  Mr. Davis collected over 14,000 arms and 50,000 other collectibles!  As you can imagine, it took us quite awhile to go through all of it...well, it took Jack quite awhile, I wasn't as enthralled with all the arms as he was!  ;-)  I will admit, as I always do, there were some interesting ones tho...

Downtown Tulsa has a tiny Art Deco Museum that I wanted to go see, so that's where we headed next.  It was small, but absolutely marvelous.  The buildings in that area of town were also from that era, so it was quite nice to just walk & drive around and see the beautiful architecture.

The following day we came back into town and visited their Museum of World Treasures, which was very interesting.  It had a number of unusual pieces that I kept asking myself if they were really real, or replicas???  My most favorite pieces, I must confess were a small display of first editions with biographies and photos of famous authors like Edgar Allen Poe, and Shakespeare, and Robert Frost (even his cape).  Very unique...

Afterward we did one of my favorite things to do in a city, which is to photograph wonderful murals, Tulsa had some fun ones including a great door and a large chicken on a rooftop (I know that's not a mural...but hey, how could you not take a picture?)

We left Oklahoma, headed to Wichita to stay overnight, then headed right back out again and drove right into Nebraska!  I had to "cross another state capitol off my list" so we headed to Lincoln!  We'll save that one for the next update! 

...on the road in Nebraska,  Marie

If you wish to view the rest of the photos from this trip, you can at my Flickr account at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/74905158@N04/

Movies & Music, what a great exit to Kansas!

 While driving around Wichita, Jack and I noticed the Starlite Drive-In movie theater that still was in operation.  Hardly believing our eyes, we drove in and happen to run into the owner, who verified that yes, it opened at 7pm, showing three screens beginning a 8pm with two movies on two screens and three movies on one screen, each screen, $12 per car!  “Wow!”  We said, “We’d be back on Saturday night!”  What a hoot!  We started reminiscing, trying to remember the last time either one of us had been to a drive-in.  It certainly hadn’t been together…and for me, it hadn’t been since my own kids were little!  For Jack, probably the same amount of years…so, we were talking about almost 30 years ago maybe?  Now that's nostalgia!   We decided we would “do it up right” - pick up some food & snacks, wear comfy cloths, bring pillows, the whole nine yards…and he had to promise to kiss me at least one time during the movie!  I could hardly wait until Saturday night! 

Saturday came, Jack cleaned the truck windows and we loaded up.  We chose the first screen.  It came with the three movies, but there was no way we would make it all the way…we are way to old for that!  Luckily the one we were interested in was the first movie, so that was the important thing.  The “new thing” is you can use the speaker (so glad they kept those!) and/or you can turn your radio to a certain channel and get the sound.  The speaker only had “on or off”, no other volume control, so I could see the reason for the radio - we just kept the speaker outside (it was a hot night, and that seemed to work just fine.  Others around us had trucks as well, and “came prepared” - they backed in and piled bean bags, blankets and pillows all around and got real comfy!   Once the snack bar commercials started we had to really laugh, because after all these years…those hadn’t changed!  About the only thing different that we could see was the addition of “Chilly Willy” which is a pickle.  I think it’s a regional thing here, because I see pickles advertised in a lot of quickie stops around the mid-west. 

A few sprinkles showed up, which brought some of the outsiders into their trucks for a little while, but then it cleared right back up again, so not a big deal.  The first movie was good.  The second got really weird, and by the second half it had reached midnight and we’d had enough, so called it a night.  I got my kiss, it was a great evening!















We had to stick around Wichita extra days to have some work done on our awning, and since we were going to be there over the weekend anyway, I told Jack that I heard that there was a Bluegrass Festival going on nearby we should attend.  We had to depend on the service guys each day to let us know when they were going to do the work on the awning, so we never quite knew what our day was going to be like.  We had hoped to go to the festival on Saturday, but that turned out to be the day they ended up doing the work - smack dab in the middle of the day, so no use making the drive over to Winfield.  We chose Sunday, which was the last day.

Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield Kansas is evidently a very BIG deal, especially for “National Flat-Picking Championships”.  We missed the guitar competition on Saturday, but was able to see the banjo competition on Sunday, and was so glad we did!  What a delight it was too!  Wow!   20 superb players in all.  After that we were able to catch a couple of fun Bluegrass acts, one called the Boxcars that were especially good.  It was equally entertaining to walk through the vendor areas as they were filled with all the various instruments, straps, picks, jewelry, music, etc that musicians and people in this field or followers would be interested in, plus the usual assortment of western wear and “stuff”.   

We’re told that almost more music is played in the adjoining campgrounds as that at the festival.  It sure would be a fun adventure to plan on attending some year!

Wichita itself wasn’t a big draw for us, and we only stayed as long as we did because of the work that we were having done, but because of that work delay, it afforded us the opportunity to experience a couple of things we wouldn’t normally have been able to do…so for that, thank you  Wichita, we had fun!

...on the road to Oklahoma, Marie

If you wish to view the rest of the photos from this trip, you can at my Flickr account at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/74905158@N04/

Whiling away our days in Wichita...

We thought we would go to Wichita for awhile...after all, it was the largest city in Kansas, and we'd never been to Kansas before, so, off we went!  382,368 people live here according to the AAA book, which usually means "there's plenty to keep us busy for 3 or 4 days!"  So, we booked ourselves into the nicest campground we could find and settled ourselves in.  We had some maintenance work that needed to be tended to on the rig, and it turned out that a great service place was just across the street, so that worked in our favor as well.

Once settled, we went in search of the "almighty tourist brochures & info center" as we missed one coming in on a different highway than it was located on.  Perusing the magazine, brochures, booklets, etc we soon discovered that Wichita has a couple of museums and a Garden that seemed interesting...but not a whole lot more.  Hmmm

We started with the most important thing...the RV Service Center, to make sure they could fix our awning.  They could, but would need to order the parts.  Done. 

Next, we decided to drive through "downtown/old town Wichita".  We like finding the "old" parts of towns, where they have been revitalized and usually turned into fun shops and restaurants.  We love to see the old buildings; so that's where we headed.  It was Sunday, so the streets were pretty empty - which can be a good thing when you don't know where you are going and find a lot of one way streets!  We did find their "old town", and stopped for a nice lunch in a fun place, but the rest of the area hadn't done much else but a few more pubs.  We couldn't really find any shops to speak of, nothing to go "browsing along".  Kind of disappointing.  They do have a couple of fun areas we did happen along tho - one is on their Douglas Ave - it's a whole bunch of bronze sculptures, scattered here and there - no names, no rhymes or reasons.  I had to Google them to find out about them!  It seems that back in 1991 the city used a grant and commissioned artist Georgia Gerber to design about 30 whimsical sculpture.  Some are a bit more "serious" like the one called "Woolworth"s Lunch Counter" depicting the '60s Civil Rights sit in, but most are just fun.  

Another interesting area they have is the "Keeper of the Plains Plaza".  It's a point where the Big and Little Arkansas rivers join together in downtown Wichita. This land between the two rivers is sacred ground to the Native American people and is also home to the All-American Indian Center.  Standing at this point is a 44-foot tall steel sculpture.  Pretty impressive.  You can see him from just about anywhere. 

We tried going to the Cowtown Museum, it was closed for a private party.  We went to the Botanica Gardens instead.  Glad we did.  Lovely gardens.  There were more birds and butterflies flying around in this garden than I had seen in any garden ever!  It was kind of funny, they had a "special bird garden", but none was there, they were all out in the rest of the garden (having a grand ole time)!

The following day we ventured over to the Coleman Factory Outlet & Museum.  What a hoot to see all the old, original lanterns and stoves!  It brought back some fond memories for both Jack and I as we had both "gone camping" as youngsters.  He with the scouts and me with my family.  My how things have changed...and yet not so much.  An interesting history, the origin of Coleman lamps!  Coleman's "Efficient Lamp" has been produced in Wichita since the beginning, 1902, and the factory is still here today.   While we were there, we met the nicest lady who asked us if we had stopped in at the "nut house" yet?  No... "Oh, you must!  It's just down the street, has every kind of old fashioned candy & chocolate, it's great!"  "Great!" Jack said, so off we go!  Nifty Nut House, wow, what a place!  You could get lost there, well...we almost did!  At least I thought I lost Jack there!  OMG, not only every kind of nut there is in this world, but just about every kind of candy too!  Oh, and dried fruit, and a whole lot of other stuff.  Just, WOW! 

...kicking back in Wichita Kansas,  Marie

If you wish to view the rest of the photos from this trip, you can at my Flickr account at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/74905158@N04/