A Dip Into Oklahoma

Today we left our camp at Barber Lake to head east for a couple of days at another wonderful Kansas Fishing Lake, Cowley, just west of Arkansas City (named for the river that departs Kansas here on its meandering way southeast into Oklahoma) which allows free dry camping for anyone with nice dirt or gravel roads to get to the private and scenic sites. But first we headed south.

Alva, Oklahoma lay just below the Kansas border from Medicine Lodge and this town, in addition to being home to the Northwestern Oklahoma State College, also has a museum which includes some memorabilia from the day the Oklahoma Land Rush made Alva, and the rest of Northern Oklahoma, part of the territory.

Lest we get all excited about the spirit of American entrepreneurship which went a long way toward making the land rush happen, we must remember that the Cherokee, who had been ousted from their homes in the Smoky and Appalachian Mountains in the 1830's to live in the desolate Indian Territory of Oklahoma had been guaranteed their land in it 'forever'.  This was a common promise surely meant by most whites who originally gave it, then removed when other leaders were voted in, or many others simply wanted the land. Such was the case with the Oklahoma Land Rush, though you'll get many an argument from some Oklahoman's and others to the contrary.

Next we traveled a bit west and north back to the Kansas border where, just at the border town of Caldwell, Kansas, we found several monuments and memorials to the long horn cattle drives up the Chisholm Trail from Southern Texas. Before the railroad came to Caldwell, the Texans had to drive their herds several hundred miles farther north to Abilene. Now Caldwell became the rowdy center of Texans bustin' loose after weeks in the saddle.

Finally we shut down FROG's diesel and set up camp on a bluff overlooking Cowley Lake.

We thought we were all alone except for the occasional pickup carrying a fisherman on one of the bottom lake side gravel roads till a jolly gray haired, bandanna cowled motor-biker rode up to see if we had any empty aluminum cans to give him.  He had a self-made chicken wire basket on the bike behind him that was already half full. He never stopped, just smiled his request, and caught us both so off guard that we only smiled and waved and he putted off down the road.

We will definitely have some for him the next time he rolls on by!

Tomorrow we take it kind of easy.  There's a wildlife refuge nearby I think we'll take in, but this 100 degree, 'normal summer weather' so we're told, can get a bit oppressive.  But as Mona likes to say, It is NOT snow.

Though sometimes a little of that in a cup is just what she and I crave!

-Ken