Oklahoma- Monday, July 29, 2019

Last year, our summer trip was built completely around Julie's desire to go to see the store built by TV personalities Chip and Joanna Gaines in Waco, Texas.  Once we decided on that for our destination, we chose the rest of the sites to visit while travelling to and from there.  Similarly, this year's trip was built around Julie's desire to go to see the store built by TV personality Ree Drummond, a.k.a. the "Pioneer Woman," in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, and that was the destination that we designed the rest of this trip around.  Even though the Pioneer Woman has a very different aesthetic then Joanna Gaines does, Julie enjoys both of them.

Julie was so excited to go to Pawhuska today that she surprised Scott when she turned down the opportunity to see the Little House on the Prairie.  We weren't expecting to come into Oklahoma from this direction, and we hadn't looked much at this corner of Kansas to see what there is to see.  Scott was surprised to see that we weren't far at all from the site where the Ingalls family had their little house, and that there was a museum there.  He was also surprised to find out that Julie did not want to go, especially since we went hours out of our way two years ago in order to get to their later home on the banks of Plum Creek in Walnut Grove, Minnesota.   But Julie was too focused on getting to the Pioneer Woman's Mercantile.  She compared it to being on the way to Disney World, but having to stop to go to church first.  Scott was disappointed and pouted until we got out of Kansas.

Somewhere south of Chautauqua, Kansas (a name that seems odd, way down here), we saw a sign that said we were leaving Kansas, and the GPS in Julie's phone said, "Welcome to Oklahoma," but we never saw a sign to get a picture of.  Scott said, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," because somebody had to say it.  It was just about then that Julie spotted a small box turtle crossing the road.  She turned us around and she and Emma went to move him to the grass and the relative safety at the side of the road.  From then on, we listened to the Oklahoma soundtrack, and it was a "Beautiful Morning."  We didn't see corn in Oklahoma, but the corn we saw in Kansas had been practically as high as an elephant's eye, and the cattle we saw here were standing like statues... mostly.  There did seem to be a lot more trees by the road and the land had more small hills in it.

Pawhuska is a very small town on the Osage Nation's land, somewhat like Salamanca is on Seneca Nation land, we expect.  One large building in town is a former bank and apparently now serves as the seat of government for the Osage Nation.  We saw the Osage Nation's flag flying over this building, but didn't notice an Oklahoma flag flying anywhere. (Maybe this is why we didn't see a "Welcome to Oklahoma" sign.)  There were Osage Nation license plates on many of the cars in town, and we eventually spotted license plates from the Cherokee, Muskogee and Choctaw Nations as we drove through the rest of Oklahoma.

Ree Drummond's Pioneer Woman Mercantile and the rest of her properties dominate the small downtown area, and many people were making their way to her store.  The main building of the Mercantile was built in 1903 and she has been renovating it to use for her restaurant and store.  She opened the Mercantile store in 2016 (which is a year after the Magnolia store was opened by the Gainses in Waco). She also owns the hotel next to it, an ice cream shop across the street (named after her dog, a basset hound named Charlie) and maybe other properties too.  Outside the front of the store, an old red pickup truck had the words "Drummond Ranch" and their cattle brand mark on it.  We browsed through her store, which contained many of her trademark cookbooks, the cookware with her bright eclectic patterns on them, clothing like t-shirts and blouses and kimonos like she wears, cowboy related items, and assorted nick knacks.  Up until this point on the trip, Scott had been doing all of the souvenir purchasing, and Julie and Emma had not gotten much for themselves.  Here at the Mercantile, it was Julie's turn to spend.  She bought two t-shirts for herself, a rolling pin, and a tea towel with Oklahoma sites on it.

After the Pioneer Woman's place, we walked down the block to visit other gift stores.  The first one we visited sold custom-made furniture, and much of it used hides, horns and other animal parts.  The woman who owned the store was very proud to show us around, but we were a little put off by it, even though the leather smelt very nice.  We continued to a few other stores, but it was at least 92 degrees out with a heat index that made it feel like at least 102, so we moved slow and didn't stray far from the air conditioning if we could help it.   Some stores were clothing stores, some were for cowboy or western gear, and all seemed to complement the Pioneer Woman's style in some way.

A little after 11:00, we went back to the Pioneer Woman's hoping to order lunch.  However, we had caught them in the space of time when the kitchen was switching from breakfast to lunch menu, and we had to wait 45 minutes in order to be seated.  We used that time to go to her bakery which was upstairs from the store, and sampled a few of her cookies- a lemon bar, a snicker-doodle, and a sugar cookie.  Scott and Emma asked Julie why they didn't seem to be selling any cookies with bacon in them, but after Julie had tried to make some from a Pioneer Woman cookbook, we already knew the reason why.  They were awful.  The ones we tried today were good, though.  When we were finally seated for lunch it seemed like there were so many problems plaguing the waitstaff.  Emma ordered a Buffalo chicken sandwich but was told that it would take longer than usual because only one fryer was working instead of the usual four.  Julie ordered flavored lemonade, but had to change the flavor when the waitress returned to tell her she had said the wrong flavors originally.  When the food finally came, it was ok.  Julie got grilled cheese dippers and chicken noodle soup.  Scott got "fancy" macaroni and cheese, which had a few onions and mushrooms in it.  Emma got her Buffalo chicken sandwich, but the potato chips that came with it seemed stale or soggy.  We felt a little sorry for the waitress, who seemed overworked by the mob of people.  Julie did think that the staff at the Gaines' restaurant last year were happier and perkier- almost like Disney cast members.

There were a few more shops on the street that we hadn't visited yet, so we went to those, but the further you got from the Pioneer Woman's store, the more it felt like a dusty run-down Oklahoma town.  Eventually we decided that we had enough of the heat, drove the car down the road just to make sure we hadn't missed anything, and decided it was time to continue on to Tulsa.  Scott queued up the playlist of Oklahoma songs that he had on his MP3 player for this part of the car ride, and the scenery matched so much of what we were hearing.

We knew beforehand that Tulsa was going to be a quicker stop than it might have otherwise been because both museums that we were interested in were closed.  The Outsiders House is supposed to open with an official dedication on August 9, which is two weeks from now, and the Woody Guthrie Center is closed on Mondays.  Still, we knew we could take some pictures, so we sought them out.

The GPS took us first to The Outsiders House.  The 7th graders in Scott's school always read the book, written by a high-school student from Tulsa, and set in a town based on what she knew.  It was only this past year that Scott read the book too.  The book was made into a movie in 1983.  The movie was filmed in Tulsa, and this house is the one used for the home of the three orphaned Curtis brothers.  The film had a remarkable cast that ended up being big stars.   Young Tom Cruise, for example, did a backflip in front of this porch.  This house was later bought by a fan, and served as a museum for a short time, but it closed.  It is scheduled to reopen again, and the Internet said it should be in 2 weeks.  There were a couple of guys doing yard work when we got here, but it looks to us like they probably are not on schedule to open on time.  There's also a lot of roadwork being done in the neighborhood.  Maybe they are getting the roads ready for visitors?  The street signs by the house show that it is on the corner of "Outsiders Way" and "Curtis Brothers Lane."

The Outsiders house isn't in the nicest part of town, but that's where you'd expect greasers to live.  We were surprised to find so many marijuana dispensaries in Tulsa.  Apparently medical marijuana is legal in Oklahoma, but judging from the many billboards, it is not hard to find a "doctor" that will write a prescription.

Scott knew there was a big mural of Woody Guthrie and wanted to get a picture by it, even though we wouldn't be able to visit the museum today.  Downtown Tulsa seemed pretty sleepy, so we parked nearby.  Julie left the car running so the air conditioner could keep Emma cool.  She was asleep in the backseat.

We ended up going to the Woodland Hills Mall next.  It felt like we were pulling a bit of "a Dublin," but it was really hot out, we wanted someplace easy to eat, and we were looking for a place that Emma might like.  There was a Disney Store here, so that was an attraction.  We didn't do a whole lot of shopping, Julie also ended up buying some maternity clothes because her pants were starting to feel tight.  Emma also got a dozen macarons.  We ended with a light dinner at the food court.

We then went to find some other locations from The Outsiders.  The Admiral Twin Drive-In was the inspiration for the scene in the book where Ponyboy and Johnny meet the two Soc girls.  The scene was also filmed here, and the author once described how surreal it was for her to see that scene play on the screens here.  The drive-in is still in use.  From there, we went to Will Rogers High School, home of "the Ropers."  (A reference to Will Rogers's famous lasso, we assume,  not the two landlords from Three's Company.)  S.E. Hinton was a student at this high school when she wrote the book, and it is the school that Ponyboy attends in the movie.  Our last stop was Crutchfield Park, where Johnny and Ponyboy are attacked.  We didn't realize it when we visited the Outsiders house earlier in the day, but this park is only a few steps away from there.  We had expected to see the fountain there, but apparently that was just built for the movie and doesn't really exist.  The spot where Dally was shot is supposed to be alongside the park and we think we found it, but it was hard to recognize.  The street there was all torn up, and a backhoe was sitting on it.  There were still more sites that we could have sought out, but we decided it was time to head out.  We took one last look at the Outsiders house as we drove past.

The route out of Oklahoma took us almost due east to Arkansas.  While we were listening to the radio, we heard warnings for severe thunderstorms with hail the size of quarters and heavy damage expected.  We could see dark skies off to the northeast in front of us and we looked at the weather radar on Julie's phone.  It looked like we were going to just skirt the storms and we'd pass south of them.  We continued forward and only saw a few raindrops.

It was almost an hour and a half drive to the Arkansas border.  For Scott and Emma, this was the second new state of the day, and it was a new state for Julie too.  We had seen Arkansas from across the Mississippi River, but we hadn't been in it before.  We are now "Arkansas Travelers."  There was a "Welcome to Arkansas" sign on the road, but not at the welcome center.  We at least got a picture by the sign that directed traffic in.  The center itself was already closed for the day.  We had a hotel room waiting for us in Bentonville, Arkansas, near its northwest corner.  When we spoke to Anna on the phone tonight, we told her that we were in Arkansas, but there weren't any monsters here.  (That goes back to when she was little, and to keep her from being scared of monsters, we told her that all the monsters went to Arkansas.  It was just a random far-away sounding place that we chose.)  Anna laughed and said she remembered that.