After a very stressful end to the last well I finally got so hard eared days off. Or almost off, I served as tactical adviser to a different well for a few days making sure it all went well for them. Luckily it did and I was able to see a few things on my days off.
I started out with Alabaster caverns in the northwest corner of Oklahoma. It’s a very cute little state park. They are trying so hard. The cave is very cool. It’s all alabaster and you can see the different colors in the minerals. The guide had been there for about 5 years and had her talk down pat. I tried my hardest to get her off script but she wouldn’t go for it. The cave is very different from my Ape cave. In alabaster cave there are hand rails that glow and spot lights so you can see all the great animal shadows. I did see some cave crawdads. Turns out they are an endangered species because the raccoons come down into the cave and go fishing for them. They have 5 types of bats but none that are in trouble because of white nose. All in all it was very cute little state park with camping and all kinds of fun things to on a hot summer day.
A few days later I stopped off at another road side attraction. The last original standing sod house built by a land claim. That is totally worth the stop if you are ever out on highway 8 in Oklahoma. The gal behind the counter was wealth of information! She told me all about how they had to go a mile north to the creek bed to find the right kind of sod because the homestead was too sandy. The blocks are about a foot by a foot chunk of buffalo grass.
Took something like a quarter of an acre to make the house. The roof alone was over a foot thick. Apparently you need the weight to hold it all together. This was quite the luxury house because it had two rooms and windows from Kansas City.
It came complete with a root cellar, a bugs in the walls, and snakes in the ceiling.
Like I said a very informative little museum and totally worth the stop. Anyone who has read Laura Ingles Wilder really needs to see it.
Today it is supper windy on the prairie. The cutting crews are working their way north and leaving nothing but dust in their wake. More about them latter.
