Oklahoma!

Yesterday I made my way from Missouri to the east side of Oklahoma. The weather has been brutally hot, with temperatures over 100F degrees and a "feels like" of 110 to 115. Sunday evening I spent the night in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. The hotel

was a challenge to locate and I thought when I made the reservation, since it wasn't on the main highway like other hotels, I wouldn't have to deal with traffic noise. I was wrong. The road it was on curved around to put the hotel on a rise... right above the highway! Fortunately, I was so spent from the heat, and slept soundly. But woke in the morning to the sound of truck traffic. 

Monday I worked my way to Miami, Oklahoma. This is my first venture into Oklahoma. I was't sure what to expect from this fly-over state. Miami, OK is just over

state line so the exploration of "all" the state had to offer didn't really happen until Tuesday, when I left Miami and headed across the Oklahoma panhandle to Woodward, Oklahoma on the west side of the state. I was on a combination of route 60 and the infamous route 66 for a ways. In the small town of Afton, I came across a cute little place that I stopped to take a couple of photos of. I had hit the road pretty early to try to minimize the suffering of the wicked heat so nothing was open. 

But both Afton and Vinita, Oklahoma were on the combination route before route 66

split off to the south. I stayed on route 60 to Enid, OK then hit route 412 to Wooodward, OK. 

During the ride I saw one of the most extensive wind farms I think I have ever seen. The large windmills were as far as I could see for miles. With the amount of breezes and hills with nothing else for miles, it was an ideal arrangement. Both before and after the wind farm, I couldn't help but think about the herds of Buffalo that once grazed these prairie lands. I could easily picture them in my mind. I was going to stop at the Woolaroc Museum and Wildlife Preserve about 45 miles north of Tulsa. Started in the early 1900s by oilman Frank Phillips (yes, as in Phillips oil, more on that in a minute) features a 3700 acre preserve and museum. However, as I rode through Vinita, just before the turn off, the temperature was nearing 94F degrees and 10am, so I decided to keep moving.

Sometime down the road, I passed a HUGE Phillips petroleum facility that stretched for several miles on both sides of the highway. Apparently Phillips obtained an early productive drilling operation in Osage County. There was eventually multi-million dollar oil lease auctions that Phillips was successful with and, surprisingly, Frank Phillips was eventually adopted into the Osage Nation. 

The Osage Nation is prevalent across the northern area of Oklahoma. A later stop at a roadside rest gave me more information on the tribe and their customs. It also offered the rare shade and a spot to hydrate, which became more and more pressing as the afternoon temperatures continued to climb. 

I had a roadside stop about an hour out of Woodward for water and a break from the sun. Despite tons of sunblock, I felt like I was riding in an oven by the afternoon. I ended up finishing my water there. By then, I was stopping about every half hour to

hour for water and to get out of the sun. 

Tonight I am in Woodward for the night and head to Raton, New Mexico tomorrow for a couple of days. 

Peace & Love all.

~Bobbi