Sulphur Springs and Stone Chairs--Touring Oklahoma

Interlochen (photo NOT by Carrie)
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Headed out of Texas this morning for Oklahoma and two NPS sites.  Weather.com suggested that the weather would be sunny (10% possibility of rain).  David and Michele looked out the window, said "see that dark sky over there in the west?  You will run into heavy storms before you get to Ft. Worth."  Guess who was right.  It wasn't the bad drivers we had to worry about, but rather the driving rain (though come to think of it, bad drivers in driving rain are even worse than usual!)  Fortunately, by the time we got to the north side of Ft. Worth the rain had stopped, and by the time we got to the Oklahoma border, the streets were dry.  The sun was out, and we had a very pretty (but cold!) day to visit Chickasaw National Recreation Area and the Oklahoma City National Memorial in (you guessed it) Oklahoma City.

El Stinko. The main sulphur spring at Chickasaw--bring a clothes pin!
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Interesting factoid about Chickasaw NRA:  According to the ranger in the visitor center, it gets 3,000,000 visitors a year.  That's MASSIVE for a National Park site--Yosemite gets roughly 3.5 million.  Not impressed?  Have YOU ever heard of Chickasaw NRA?  David explains:  "There aren't any other major outdoor parks in Oklahoma.  If you want to go camping, hiking, boating, or picnicking, it's Chickasaw or nothing."  One feels inclined to concede the point.

"...give Rodgers and Hammerstein credit for one thing: the wind DEFINITELY comes sweeping down the plain!"

Empty Chairs Memorial
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Chickasaw, as it turns out, started life as a very small National Park in 1906 (one of the earliest), and incorporated the area surrounding a set of roughly 33 mineral springs that had become a famous and heavily touristed health resort.  People came to drink the water--of which there were two basic types:  Bromide and Sulphur.  A number of the mineral springs have dried up in the interim; there remain, however, a few of the Sulphur springs, and they water is regularly tested for drinking safety.  Drink away, we were told.  Michele was asking us last night what there is to do at National Parks; well, at Chickasaw, there is mineral water to drink.  So we figured we had better drink some.

The Lincoln Bridge--1909
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As a result of this resolution, we provided significant entertainment for a family of tourists hovering around the outside edges of Pavilion Springs.  There were mom, dad (with camera), and two children about 8-ish.  Tim and I waltzed up, rinsed our mostly-empty Pepsi cans, and took a drink.  The first bout of hilarity followed Tim's grimace upon pouring out the rinse water--the smell was, shall we say, pungent.  The faces we made (not to mention the "oh, blech!") resulted in the children dancing around and refusing to try it themselves.  The dad finally talked the daughter into trying it (agreeing with our exortations that people have been coming to Chickasaw for 150 years to drink the water--they couldn't go away without trying it!), and she stuck one finger in the spring and licked it.  "It just tastes normal!" she cried.  The mom finally took the plunge, figuratively speaking, and her "blech" reaction was even more dramatic than ours.

Reflecting Pool at Oklahoma City National Memorial
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They should have seen us half an hour later at the Vendome spring (the biggest spring in the park, and the one that people bring jugs to to fill up with the "medicinal" water):  first of all, as soon as you get out of the car, a good 50 feet from the fountain, you can smell the sulphur.  Holy cow.  What a stench!  Secondly, that water is completely vile.  I mean DISGUSTING!  The movie in the nature center said that doctors used to prescribe 1/2 gallon a day ("Drink one large glass every two to four hours").  I'd rather be sick.  I might rather be dead.  Nasty, nasty, NASTY stuff!  And people actually came there on purpose (in trainloads--13 trains a day!) to drink the stuff?  No accounting for taste--at least no accounting for taste for terrible tastes!  P-U!  But if you go there, you'd better take a taste too; doesn't count if you just pick up the park brochure!

The Survivor Elm
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Here's the website: Chickasaw National Recreational Area.  Maybe you can convince your doctor to write you a prescription!

In honor of David and Michele's giant ham, which provided us with sandwiches, we ate a rather short picnic lunch at the edge of Veterans Lake, but the wind was howling (so cold that the Canada Goose nearby was too busy hiding under his wings to come and beg for a piece of sandwich) and we didn't stay long.  Tim wondered when the last time was that we had a picnic in December; we decided that the answer was "never," as prior to today, we had always had too much sense.

Flower Park (No longer planted with flowers) at Chickasaw NRA
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On the way out of town, we had a most exciting visit to the Sulphur WalMart; I left my pillow at David and Michele's house--can't count on hotels to have enough pillows, so purchase was called for.  (Turned out to be a good idea, too, as the hotel does NOT have enough pillows!  $6.50 well spent.)

In the afternoon, we went to the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which commemorates both the survivors and the victims of the bombing in 1995.  There is a museum, but we declined to pay $10 a head to learn more about Timothy McVeigh, whom, we both agree, is a poster boy for the death penatly, of which I am as a rule a staunch opponent.  The site of the old Federal Building has been made into a memorial garden, with one empty chair for each of those killed.  The chairs have a marble seat and a crystal base, and when the sun shines on them, they are quite beautiful.  There is a reflecting pool where the street used to be (where the van with the bomb was parked), and there is a wall of tiles made by children all over the US in the aftermath of the bombing.

Little Waterfall at Chickasaw NRA
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There is also a chain link fence--a remnant of the one that was put up around the bomb site at the time.  It became, in 1995, an impromptu memorial, with people leaving flowers, letters, photos, and stuffed animals in memory of those killed, and a piece of the fence was retained for people to continue the practice as part of the official memorial.  Nowadays, however, and sadly, people mostly leave junk--their license plates ("all about me"), baseball caps, and other crap.  Not at ALL the same kind of thing as the mementos that get left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C.  There people leave letters, personal belongings of the people who died, medals, wedding rings--real mementos, tributes to those who died.  In Oklahoma City, it's more like "Goober was Here."

The Children's Tiles at Oklahoma City
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This site, as a matter of fact, leaves me a good deal colder than the Vietnam Wall (and I don't just mean due to the weather, which was blasting through the site--whatever you think of the dreadful musical Oklahoma, give Rodgers and Hammerstein credit for one thing:  the wind DEFINITELY comes sweeping down the plain in OK--all over the whole blasted state!).  The big message plastered around Oklahoma City is "On American Soil," as if the real affront is WHERE it happened, rather than THAT it happened, and WHO it destroyed.  "On American Soil" seems to me to suggest that somehow all those dead children are more tragic because they died here and not in Europe, and as if, somehow, McVeigh was a foreign terrorist instead of a disaffected white American guy.  Jingoistic.  Not my cup of tea.  On the whole, I prefer the "Survivor Tree," a 65-year-old Elm tree that used to be in the parking lot, survived the blast, and is now part of the memorial, standing vigil, as it were.

Interesting bird of the day:  Harris Hawk.  That's three that we've seen, theoretically out of their range.  Also two Barred Owls in the nature center at Chickasaw.  Beautiful creatures!

Bad driving of the day:  Moron in fast lane in rain (not heavy rain either, by then), going 55 in 70 zone.  Tying up traffic in all lanes as giant pickup trucks wove around trying to get past him.

Worst TV of the day:  Cal playing Miami in the Emerald Bowl (the WHAT?  Surely that must be new!  How many of these are there?  Does every school in the nation now go to some bowl or another?)--the score is tied, but Cal is being outplayed right, left, up and down.  If they manage to win this, it will be a miracle.

Best ballpark of the day:  Bricktown in Oklahoma City.  Seems to be AAA league park of Cincinatti (streets all named after Johnny Bench and other famous ball players).  Beautiful park, at least from outside.  Bet we don't get anything that nice in Richmond!

Tomorrow:  one more try at Buffalo River!

P.S.  For those of you waiting with bated breath:  we did manage to get back to Interlaken to see the Christmas lights.  There were about half the lights (many households presumably tired of the whole scene shut down the show after Christmas), but also about 1/100th the cars.  I'll make that trade any day.  What there was was impressive enough--and plenty to give you an idea of what the whole scene must look like in full glory.  Conspicuous consumption lives.  (This photo is not mine.)