Mostly West

It turns out that we had been in Guthrie in 2001 – how quickly one forgets! That’s why I keep a journal, but one does have to remember to check it!

Anyway, today, Tuesday, October 22, we decided to do a scenic drive as we headed west. The one we chose followed Highway 281 from Menlo to Anadarko OK. We had an interesting time navigating from Guthrie to Menlo. Don has become quite enthusiastic about his Nexus and as long as he remembers to download the maps we find it a real boon to navigation.

A lot of land in Oklahoma seems to belong to American Indian tribes. They are called Nations because they are self governing and we kept seeing signs that we were leaving one Nation and entering another. We saw lots of oil wells, cattle, cotton, and tree covered hills.

From Highway 281 we worked our way over to Medicine Park, just north of Lawton, and took scenic Highway 49 through the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. This was a real find – a beautiful drive, wild animal sightings, and early American history all in one place. The Wildlife Refuge was designated by Teddy Roosevelt in 1905 to preserve the bison which were almost extinct. Later they brought in elk and in 1927 they introduced the Texas Longhorn Steer. We saw all of these plus a prairie dog colony.

By the time we were through all of this driving we decided to call it a day, and stopped in Altus OK.

On Wednesday, October 23, we spent most of the day driving. We crossed into the Texas Panhandle first thing and immediately noticed the great roads – wide shoulders, passing lanes, smooth riding… We drove to Lubbock TX and made a brief search for the Buddy Holly monument, but our tour book is out of date and we couldn’t find it. We forged on across the panhandle on I-40 to Hobbs NM where we spent the night.