Oklahoma Update

This past weekend our family did a little traveling! Our Saturday began as so many before have, with a trip to McDonalds for breakfast. The excitement level rose ever so slightly with a visit to a home and garden center convention. Woo. It wasn't until we found Route 66, just north and east of Tulsa, that things began to get interesting. The first fun thing we spotted (and one day we'll visit) was a giant blue whale on the side of the road. Fancy! I have to leave Florida and the ocean, travel 1,000 miles inland, to see a beached whale! Who knew. We followed the Mother Road till we saw a sign that said "World's Largest Totem Pole". By golly, that was the largest totem pole I'd ever seen. Some guy left his job every evening for 25 five years and built this totem poles out of concrete in the middle of nowhere. It was actually pretty darn cool.

Did I mention the totem pole was in the middle of nowhere? It was off the main road. Which means we should have gotten back onto the main road. But we didn't. There was another sign for a winery luring us in a different direction. We spent an hour and a half driving all over creation staring at farmland and reading signs. One of those signs said -- and I quote -- "Don't shoot over road". I think I heard banjos. And no matter how I pled, cajoled and otherwise begged my husband to stop at a farmhouse and ask directions, we continued to drive in circles till we saw civilization return.

The real reason for our adventure was so that husband Chris could say he'd been to Missouri, which is about two hours from our house. Well, about four hours out, but only two hours back. We took a trip to Disney next. You read that right -- look it up. I must say, Disney, OK, bears absolutely no resemblance to it's cousin in Florida. Unless Walt has a mess o' trailer parks and ATVs parked somewhere out back. We blew thru as quickly as we could, only to get lost again (I'm not very good with maps, it turns out). And eventually we managed to find Miami, again a poor relation to the Florida version. And here they pronounce it mi-a-muh. No stopping there. On to Joplin, MO.

Here I digress. As most of you know, Oklahoma suffered massive ice storms a few weeks ago. Tulsa wasn't very badly hit, but many of our neighbors north and south were hit hard. We drove thru some of that territory last weekend and saw a tremendous amount of tree damage everywhere. Many of you will remember the tree damage Oviedo sustained during Hurricane Charley? Microbursts. The ice tore apart these poor Oklahoma trees for miles. Looked much the same as that hurricane damage. All that to say we saw many electric company trucks out restoring power to people's homes. Even followed one for aways while looking for Disney. As we were following we saw a sign that said "Danger: Steep Hill". One of those yellow diamond shaped signs. We look ahead and see what appears to be a very steep hill curving up and away from us in the distance, but it's nothing we can't handle. It wasn't until the power truck ahead of us literally dropped off the face of the earth that Chris slowed down. I guess we found Disney after all. Our stomachs all leaped from our mouths, only to return on the ascending hill.

I'd tell you about Joplin, that being the ultimate destination of this trip, but it wasn't anything special. We ate. We went home. And here we are. I hope to have more adventures to relate soon, but Oliver's Saturday basketball games start this weekend. Hopefully we'll drive out to the salt plains this spring and dig for hourglass selenite crystals. Anyone care to join us? I wish you all were here. Until I write again ...

Flea