Flame and Pyro Adventures: Bye Ark., Hello Okla.

Friday, September 23, 2016

We were glad to leave Fayetteville! The bikers were up late last night, revving up their engines, and generally having FUN I guess.

Anyway, we drove just a short distance southwest of Fayetteville to the Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park. Prairie Grove Battlefield has been nationally recognized as one of the most intact Civil War sites. Prairie Grove (December 7, 1862) marked the last major Civil War engagement in northwest Arkansas. We checked out the Museum first then we enjoyed the self-guided walking tour and all the history along the way. We also did the self-guided driving tour. A very well done and well preserved place in history.

I love this old tree!

After touring the Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park we once again headed west and in no time at all we were in Oklahoma! We immediately saw this sign......

.....this is where we should have drove to yesterday evening (in hindsight) instead of paying that outrageous price for a room in Fayetteville. Oh well.

What a beautiful area! The Falls are suffering from the extended dry weather we have had but it is still quite lush and enjoyable.

We continued westward. Our next destination was Pawhuska, Ok.

I have followed the Pioneer Woman blog for several years, I have also bought all of the Pioneer Woman Cookbooks, I have even met the Pioneer Woman (at a book signing in Dallas) and got her to autograph my cookbooks, so I was looking forward to visiting her new PW Mercantile in Pawhuska, Ok.

However, before we left on this vacation she moved her opening date up a month.......Oh well.

We enjoyed walking and looking around the small town since we were there anyway. This is very unusual wedge-shaped building in Pawhuska.

We climbed the many steps up to the Courthouse and got a good view of the surrounding area from atop the hill.

Next we headed south to the tiny town of Hominy, Ok. Hominy is home to several sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places. We toured the Fred Drummond Home, built in 1905 by Fred and Addie Drummond who had built one of the most successful trading and ranching operations in Oklahoma.

We admired this wall covered in murals depicting local history.

This is the Marland Oil Station, built in 1921, along with more than 50 of the same design across the state. After Marland was bought by Conoco, the building became home to Hominy's historical archives.

Saturday, September 24, 2016
Last evening we drove to the outskirts of Tulsa where we found a nice hotel for the night.

We planned to check out a park in Tulsa. When we arrived we discovered that there was a benefit run in progress so a lot of streets were blocked off and there were hundreds of runners and also more hundreds of folks along the way cheering on the participants. But we managed to find a place to park and enjoyed walking around.