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Epic Road Trip 2 #2
My free camping app took me to a conservation area in Oklahoma. The mapping function has degraded or I need to download All Trails because it has been consistently unreliable. I was able to take clues from the description and find it in Google Maps. There was a big camp of presumably hunters but they were quiet and across the campground. I had a nice campfire and heated up a can of spaghettios and toasted some marshmallows.
I drove up to the main road to get a signal and routed to a hiking area west and south. On the drive I stopped for gas and looked at attractions again and backtracked to Tulsa to go to Woodruff Park. It’s a rose garden park which December is not it’s best face. They had some other gardens and this great statue of Linaeus.
There was also a historical society with a museum. I walked through the herb society holiday market but it was all peopley and I’m opting out of Christmas this year with solo travel so it had nothing to offer. Hot cider was tempting but not in a Styrofoam cup.
The museum volunteer was nice and they had a room devoted to the Tulsa Race Massacre. Lots of photos and I learned the Black folks were put in internment camps after which I did not know. An Oklahoma task force examining the issue 25 years or so ago recommended reparations but of course they’re still waiting.
I learned Tulsa was founded by Native Americans, Cherokee I believe but it was light on artifacts. There was a big exhibit on Route 66 and I mentioned that some day car culture would be looked at similarly to the Tulsa Race Massacre, also acknowledging I’m on a road trip. I still took up the offer for a photo.
I also checked out the statuary of Native American ballerinas and finished up with a walk through the collection of the trees as I’d heard the holly was impressive. Not a lot of berries. The Japanese Maples were impressive and rolling back to an earlier stage of Fall is a nice benefit of traveling south.
My next destination was the Seminole Museum. I knew a lot of the history but learned a lot more. The Seminole were a collection of tribal remnants ravaged by disease and were in Florida panhandle and Alabama before being pushed south. Great history of resistance and had to be captured in waves to get sent west. Lots of Black folks fleeing slavery had joined up which drew the ire of the US.
The two newest bands were both Black Seminoles. Those sent to Oklahoma were first put on the Creek Reservation and had a tough time of it. Including Black folks they were threatened by slave owning Creeks. They split over the civil war but most backed the South and took a further beating during reconstruction. Others joined the Black regiments of the North.
The museum was cool, lots of artifacts and in depth interpretation as well as a growing collection of modern Native American art. I don’t have enough signal to post pics. I’m currently camped by the Brazos River Dam. I got in just before dark and enjoyed a nice campfire and had the free campground to myself. I’m going to hike the Brazos today and stay another night to get some time out of the van.
My last night in Oklahoma led me to a Love’s Truck Stop. It was a small car lot with lots of loud trucks so I stayed at a nearby Walmart Parking lot. I brought a sleeping mask and had a good night there. I went back to the truck stop for coffee and my morning constitutional.
It was heavy fog and cool so I read until well after sunrise. I took back roads and drove slow until the sun finally burned away the fog. I wish I could upload pics when I stopped at a graveyard. You can see one on my Facebook page. Mike Trapp Columbia MO, look for the personal page and not my professional page which is not really active.
I’m going to do my morning chores and go for a hike so I’ll leave Ft Richardson for my next post. Thanks for reading. Would love to see comments, questions or whatnot.
Ambling Around Down East
I keep hoping to get regular about writing posts but being on vacation I may just do it. It’s day three of vacation and I am starting to settle in. Being relaxed and away from work and getting lots of exercise, eating fresh seafood and seeing really cool stuff is good for my state of mind.
My ex-neighbor Rich picked us up at 4:30 bless his heart and we had smooth flights. We changed planes at JFK and that is a long terminal. When we arrived in Bangor and took our rental car to our Motel in Trenton. It’s really cute, they have a pen with a couple sheep and goats. There is a nice view of a bay and a little mountain across the airport we abut.
We slept in so arrived with the crowds and had traffic jams and had to skip many things because there was no parking. We did get the lay of the land and saw cool stuff at Otter Bay and some other area with granite rocks going down to the bay. It was sunny and t-shirt weather. I slipped and fell on some slick spots but no harm was done.
If I haven’t mentioned it I blew out my knee in March and was on crutches for awhile. I’ve been focusing on being more active and building my capacity back up for about 2 1/2 months. The first 2 months it was just walking though I got up to a lot of 7 mile days.
I moved my big plant from my apartment back to my house in Columbia and just getting it down a flight of stairs kicked my ass and made me realize how puny I’d gotten in Leavenworth just walking.
I’ve been working on it moving steel bunk beds a couple of days for work, loading my van with books and furniture and helping Rich move has gotten me in a pattern of a full body workout. I got some of that on our first full day at the park where I was doing some climbing around on the rocks.
There were some nice overlooks and places to walk around on the rocks. I slipped and fell more than once navigating on the wet rocks. I’ve worn the tread off some key spots on my Chacos I learned. We also added a second loop after dinner and after a traffic jam that kind of made it not worth it even though it’s a pretty cool site we checked out a lighthouse.
The next day we headed back to Acadia, more informed and a bit earlier and we did the loop again stopping at different sites. We walked some on a carriage trail and took a bit of a side hike on a cool trail. We’ve been limited on what we can do as one of us can’t walk far or tackle tough terrain.
The fog was in so not much on the scenic outlook. It did thin the crowds.
Day three we had planned a whale watching trip. Took us awhile to figure out parking and find a spot with the traffic. We were paying and discussing what we were going to do when we learned to check and see if it were cancelled, which it was.
We went to the Abbe Museum instead. It had a all collection of artifacts but some really nice stuff and contemporary and neat contemporary exhibits that have some cool stuff.
We grabbed breakfast at the This Way Cafe and it was excellent. The Ploughman’s Plate was popular with a boiled egg, pickles, mustard, maple link sausage, candied walnuts, and some chunks of cheese all local. I wanted that too but I had a good feeling about the hash which was billed as homemade. Sure enough it was the ground kind and not fried meat and potato chunks that most places bill as hash.
Good time to mention the food. We tried to go to Helen’s the first night but the crowd scared us off so we got cold cuts and such at the store near our house. The. Next night we went there early. I had the halibut which was ok but a bit underpriced. I had a bite of Flow’s lobster roll and some of John’s clam strips. All pretty yummy.
Last night we went to a lobster barbecue place and I had a lobster tail but got some pulled pork French fries to share. Wish I would have gotten the barbecue. I probably won’t get a lobster roll.
Tropical Storm Phillipe gave us a rain day today and tomorrow. This morning we went to Cordelia Stanford’s house and grounds which are now a bird sanctuary and nature center. She’d had a nervous breakdown and started photographing birds to recover and became an ornithologist.
We saw some raptors, a nice looking red tail hawk and a black vulture stood out. The timid looking great horned owl was a sight as well. We took a stroll in the woods and a boardwalk and saw a lot of mossy woods and fungi.
The house was closed so we couldn’t see her photos.
Hoar Frost in the Graveyard
After visiting all the parks here in Leavenworth and the surrounding areas I started working my way through the graveyards. Sunday it was really foggy and I heard reports of ice fog and thought it might be a good day to explore Mt. Carmel Cemetery. It turned out I was right.
Lots of the statuary had hoar frost in what looked like cobwebs.
Even the most whimsical statuary I’ve seen in a graveyard did not escape the hoar frost.
The fog was more of what I expected to see and I got one good shot of it.
It’s a big cemetery and the historic stuff is scattered throughout. They must have had isolated shrines and burial areas back in the day. There are still large parcels that are grassy fields. There are a lot of modern graves with laser pictures, bad poetry and things people are into like sports teams. People leaving grave offerings is touching though.
I also saw my first sex marriage tombstone. It made me feel a little better about modernity when I was thinking history might find us banal and silly. I’ll leave you with this weird Janus Crucifix which had a Jesus on each side in the middle of a turnaround.
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