Days 1 and 2 of the big western trip

I've decided to periodically provide updates from the road so some of the more interesting things that happen to us get told while they're still fresh in my mind...

Here's one last picture from just prior to us leaving for our big western trip--Kenny, Beth, and Stephen hosted some friends of theirs (Sage, Peyton, and Elisabeth McBride) for a nice little tea party in our backyard last Tuesday. On Wednesday, we left our home in Monticello for the trip. Our first stop was Hot Springs, so Hope could attend a meeting on city tree boards (for which she is the president of the Monticello tree board). By early afternoon, we were westward bound once again, driving a highway across western Arkansas into Oklahoma. As we crossed into Oklahoma and stopped for supper, it began to rain lightly. Within an hour of getting back on I-40, we were in a major deluge, with strong winds lashing us and an amazing lightning show--we actually watched a lightning strike blast the median between the lanes of the interstate! Being in Oklahoma, we were more worried about tornadoes than lightning, and for good reason--apparently there was a tornado reported not too far from where we were at the time. Our luck with travel and weather this year have not been good...more on this later.

Today (Thursday) opened fairly clear, cooler, and less humid. We stayed in a hotel in Shawnee, Oklahoma last night, not quite an hour east of Oklahoma City. Traveling I-40, we made good time across the state. We turned off the interstate onto state roads to travel to a historic site, which was the location of a battle between the Cheyenne Indians led by Chief Black Kettle and the 7th Calvary led by George Armstrong Custer. Custer and his men ambushed the sleeping Indian village on a cold winter day in late 1868, killing and capturing quite a number of Indian men, women, and children before withdrawing prior to the arrival of a larger party of warriors. The Washita Battlefield National Monument (http://www.nps.gov/waba/) has a beautiful new visitor center and a very compelling program and story to tell, and is worth a visit if you are in the area. The battlefield is like many of these western sites--quiet yet dramatic, peaceful yet stirring.

After our visit to this battlefield, we then drove about a half-hour west into the panhandle of Texas to a small town called "Canadian" named after the Canadian River, which flows eastward through here to its juncture with the Arkansas River further east in Oklahoma. We stopped for lunch at a Dairy Queen restaurant, in part because it seemed our best option at the time, and in part because of the company we were to keep... Those of you that watch the Weather Channel regularly will know of the "Vortex 2" tornado chasing program that they are promoting now. This is a group of scientists and students from a number of universities that are studying severe weather, especially tornadoes, using specialized equipment. Last night when we were watching the Weather Channel to figure out what to expect for today, they were in some place in Kansas chasing storms. Well, today they were in...Canadian, Texas, during lunch! Below is a picture I took from the Dairy Queen just before 1 p.m. today:

The greenish minivan on the right is ours... The cone-shaped objects on the vehicles on the left are some type of portable radar units. The white car in the center has a number of weather gauges on it, and the white pickup on the left is one of their vehicles as well. The picture below is of another radar unit (I believe):

There were quite literally dozens of these vehicles in this little town associated with this research program--quite an impressive site! The truck below was from Texas Tech University, which has a major severe weather study program:

We were a little nervous seeing that they were in our area, but they headed north towards the Colorado/Kansas border, and we continued into the panhandle of Oklahoma. Granted, we were not far from them, but they were chasing possible tornadoes well to the north of us--we are now in a hotel in Guymon, Oklahoma, and the skies were clear as the sun set tonight. After we left the storm chasers, we went to Beaver Dunes State Park (http://www.touroklahoma.com/detail.asp?id=1+5U+3582) in the panhandle of Oklahoma:

These large sand dunes formed from sand blown off the rivers flowing during the last ice age, and are now covered with low vegetation except where people drive over them with off-road vehicles (part of this park is reserved for this use). We took a mile-long hike through the vegetated dunes before heading to our hotel tonight.

So far, we've managed to keep our sanity (barely) and plan to arrive in the Denver area by tomorrow evening. We plan to meet one of my high school buddies (Matt Hodek) who lives in Denver and spend an evening with him before continuing westward. I don't know how often I'll be able to make these posts, but check back frequently!