This part of Texas is very down-at-heel. The homes and yards are not kept up, and the small towns are depressing. Driving through small villages such as Hooks, New Boston, DeKalb, Detroit and Blossom I felt so sorry for them and so very lucky to live where we do. As we were passing through one of those places the radio was playing "I come from a long line of losers." It's easy to understand why country songs are so sad and tragic when you see the circumstances that some people live under.
Yes, there is a Detroit, Texas! We couldn't resist taking some pictures...
Paris, Texas looked like a nice big city with all of the amenities - it looked like a place where you could be comfortable living.
After we entered Oklahoma, things began to look a little brighter. There are no lowland swamps or standing water, and that makes a big difference. Oklahoma has a varied terrain - pastureland, rolling hills, and larger hills in the distance. It's quite pretty. What a change from northeastern Texas and Louisiana.
It was a surprise to find ourselves on the Choctaw Turnpike through the Choctaw Nation. Oklahoma is divided into several different Native American Nations - it's like experiencing the Old West in the 21st century.
Our route took us through the Choctaw, Creek, and Cherokee Nations. The Creek Nation signs all said "Muscogee (Creek) Nation". We saw several casinos in these areas but they're very small and humble looking compared to Turtle Creek or Leelanau Sands.
The lunch stop was at Braum's in Henryetta. We thought it was a unique Henryetta kind of a place, but we saw several more along the highway this afternoon.
Nuvi had us by-pass Tulsa, so we didn't see much of it, but they have a great NPR station. Our destination for today is Bartlesville, and it seems like a lovely city. We have enjoyed being here.
We picked up our Oklahoma caches in Bartlesville before we checked in to the Fairfield Inn.
Found it 10/15/2009 You found My Island Travel Bug Resort (Traditional Cache)Went to the Rib Crib for dinner - yummy!
To celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary, we designed a coin. Our first goal was to find a cache in each of Michigan's 83 counties and to launch a coin in each new county we added to our list. After we completed that quest in the fall of '07, we have set as our next goal to cache all 50 states and launch a coin named after each one we add. We are on our fall expedition to find a cache and launch a coin in Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. We drove over 1400 miles to get here and appreciate being able to find a cache where we can begin the travels of our Oklahoma coin. Signed the log, left our card and coin and picked up a bug.
