Now in Arizona

We arrived in Holbrook, AZ yesterday afternoon so it's a slow morning waking up. We left Oklahoma City on Thursday (elevation 1,230) and arrived here Saturday (elevation 5,080). I'm glad we have a down day today so my body can adapt. I jumped up too quick this morning to come downstairs and my head was spinning. Taking it slow today.

Last Thursday was the 20th anniversary of Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work. The college, where I worked for 18 years participated in this and it was such a special time for me and my employees. When it first started, only daughters could go to work with a parent to job shadow and see what their parent did as a job. Within a year or two, they included sons in it, as it should be. My kids took turns coming to work with me and they would follow me through my day, sitting in on meetings with employees or staff meetings or whatever mom had to do that day. It was such a neat experience to share my workday with my kids. They get to learn about how you make a living and they learn important lessons about interacting with other people in a workplace setting. I know my kids have fond memories of all the years they did this and I hope it helped shape them into good employees for others. They're both great supervisors, having witnessed this first hand. Their employees love them ! My employees loved bringing their children into work with them so they could learn about what mom or dad did at the college. Kids need real world experiences to know about the types of opportunities that are out there.

If any of you like to visit National Parks, like we do, then you need to check out Chimani Apps.Last year, to celebrate National Parks Week, they gave away their suite of park apps and they have five new parks available this year for free. I downloaded a bunch of them and they have so many neat features to them. Lots of detail on hiking trails, scenic places, schedule of ranger led events, etc. They will come in handy for our trip to Zion, Bryce and Canyonland in June. Check them out at your app store on your smart phone.

On our trip west we took a little detour, to go north to Santa Fe, so we could see our friends Wendy and Cindy. They drove down, with Wendy's mom and dad to have dinner with us. It was great to catch up and have a fun evening together. They gave us a great tip, on a place to stay in Santa Fe, that they found from the Day's End directory. This is a publication that Escapees puts out with free or cheap places to stay. We stayed on the rodeo grounds and had full hookups for $20. Easy to get in and out and there were quite a few different sites. We got to watch the horses and steers in the corrals next to us during our stay and it is certainly a place to consider if going to the area. You need to call ahead so they can give you the gate code...the phone # is 505-316-5141, option #9. The address is 3237 Rodeo Drive, Santa Fe, NM. Payment needs to be in the form of cash.

Left Santa Fe Saturday morning and drove the rest of the way to Holbrook and arrived around 1:30. The whole trip took us through 3 time zones, which is another thing that tricks our systems. Since Arizona doesn't recognize Daylight Savings, we are on Pacific time (3 hours behind the east coast). Our drive started out great but upon entering Arizona, we encountered really wicked wind gusts that would hit us like a flyswatter, smacking us sideways. I swear the one time we were up on two wheels when it slammed us sideways into the other lane. That got my heart pounding and we backed off on our speed cause you never knew when one of these gusts would slam us. Linda B was driving and it scared the crap out of her too. But we got here, safe and sound. We're settled in and will stay at this park for a week and move to the other park next week. Seems so weird (but nice) that we're now in 80 degree temps (although the nights are in the 40's). I'll take it over the 40 degree daytime temps we had in Oklahoma. We skipped spring and went right into summer.

Final Days of Fun

We got to have a final visit with our friends Dave and Susie Smeal this past weekend. They came to our rig and hung out with us for a few hours, chatting and talking about the countdown to the time when they will become full time RVers, like us. It's always great to see them during our time in Oklahoma.

We also got to see some of our RV Women pals from the area. We last saw them during the RVW National Conference in Gillette, WY last summer. We went out to dinner at an area restaurant and had a good time catching up.

On Saturday we went to an 89ers parade in Lexington, OK. I guess many communities have these. They are celebrations that mark the great land rush in Oklahoma where people staked their claim to land for a homestead. Folks, like the ones in this wagon, in search of making a new life for themselves and their families. There were a lot of entries like this in the parade. I guess that there are actual clubs where these folks go out "camping" together in the wilderness. Talk about boondocking.....this is one of the earliest forms of that. There were bucket seats, that had come from a car, in some of these so the driving arrangement was a little more comfy than back in the homesteading days. You gotta improvise !

We also got to take a tour of the Braum's manufacturing facility in Tuttle, OK. They have a 500,000 square foot processing plant, warehouse and bakery facility on 10,000 acres. I don't remember how many cows they have at this facility but they did say that there are 50 calves born DAILY at the facility and we could see the thousands of calf hutches lined up near the facility. All of the cows are in an indoor area, with each cow having a cubicle of space to hang out in until the trolley takes them to the milking parlor (I would think the exercise would do them good to walk to the parlor but what do I know). There is another farm located on the border between Texas and Oklahoma that has a dairy herd and 24,000 acres that is used to grow alfalfa for the herds. In the video we watched, this other farm lets their cows graze most of the time, as opposed to the Tuttle farm where they seem to spend most of the time indoors. There are over 300 Braum's stores, in five states. William and Mary Braum still live on the farm. William is 85 and still involved in the daily operations of the farm, although Drew Braum, the son,is the main overseer of the business now.

I must say that I wasn't very impressed with our tour guide. She had just returned from vacation and was either really distracted, by the work waiting for her on her desk, or she's just a lousy tour guide. We had several elderly people in the tour and it wasn't until we had climbed the first flight of steps that she said to the elderly couple, "Oh, we do have an elevator" but made no effort to show them where it was so they could utilize it. At the end of the tour, when we returned to the office and sat eating an ice cream bar, she said " This is the time when I usually sit and chat with you but since I've been on vacation for the last six days, I've got a huge pile of papers on my desk. When you're ready for your cookie, come to the door and see me but don't eat your cookie inside the building." Apparently her work was more important than delivering good customer service. She was also very abrupt and annoyed if anyone got ahead of her on the tour route. In my mind, she's not the person that should be the face of Braum's. While their operation is huge and impressive in some regards, I'm not a fan of cows being kept indoors and not allowed to do what ruminant animals are intended to do...graze for grass OUTDOORS. The video showed all the fancy grains they are fed and the specialty mixes of roasted soybeans, etc. but when someone asked the tour guide what they do with the "mistakes" on the production line in the bakery, she said they grind it up and mix it in the cow feed. Hmmm, that sounds like a natural part of a cows diet....ice cream cones, cookies, bread and muffins.

Braum's only builds stores within 300 miles of the production facility so that items can be delivered fresh to the stores every other day. They'll never become a national brand for that fact (so she said). They employ 9000 employees for the whole chain...the production facility has 500 employees. If you're interested in taking the free tour, call several days in advance. They give 3 tours a day but it can take them several days to get back to you to schedule it. I don't have as big a warm and fuzzy feeling about the banana splits we've consumed over the last 10 days as I did before learning more about Braum's. It will be a great deterrent when I get the urge for more ice cream. Yea Braum's !

Lake Murray State Park

Yesterday Linda and I took a drive down to Ardmore, OK to check out Lake Murray State Park, which is Oklahoma's largest and oldest state park. What a pretty lake ! Ardmore hasn't been fortunate enough to have gotten any of the recent rain that we've experienced in Oklahoma City/Norman area. Ardmore is two hours south of where we are....going back towards Texas.

Over the winter they rebuilt the nature center that is located at Tucker Tower. What a beautiful facility it is.

To get to Tucker Tower, you go out the back door of the nature center and up the hillside. Tucker Tower has a 360 degree view of the area.

 

 

 

The path to Tucker Tower goes by this cute little house, perched on the side of the hill. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see our kitty escort that was walking along the stone wall to see us on our way. What a peaceful setting for a house !

At the tower, there is a lot of information about the building of Lake Murray in the 30's by the CCC.

There were lots of men working on the project and as you look at the stonework, the massive fireplace and the lake itself, you get a sense of how massive the CCC programs were and what important services they provided. The displays show the classroom settings where the workers learned how to read and write, the kitchens and the barracks where they lived. The CCC is responsible for a lot of the wonderful facilities that families still enjoy throughout our country. There are three stories to the tower and then 25 steps up a spiral staircase to get to the walkway that encircled the whole tower, with gorgeous views in all directions.

On the backside of the nature center is a lovely deck, overlooking the lake. If it had been a warmer day, we would have liked to sat there for a while with a good book but the wind was very cold yesterday. 

Not only is the building beautiful but it's really "green" too, which I love. They use a closed geothermal loop, under the lake, for heating the center. They have solar light tubes in the restrooms to provide natural light. They harvest all of their rainwater for use in the building and they have solar collectors on the roof. How cool is that ! I loved reading all the signage in the building explaining all the different green elements they had incorporated into the building. Good stuff !

We left Lake Murray and made the drive back to OKC after stopping at the Oklahoma landmark, Braum's to get a banana split to give us strength for the two hour drive. Oh, it was so good ! A fun day, beautiful drive and a neat facility worth exploring if you ever get to Ardmore, OK.

Stay Positive and Love One Another...

The images on TV this afternoon reminded me of those from 9/11 when we saw the plumes of debris racing down the street after the tower collapsed. It gave me the same sinking feeling in my stomach. I saw the first images, inside a client's restaurant, just minutes after getting a text from my daughter that she was locked in her office after hearing two loud bangs and not knowing what was going on. She had texted me earlier this morning with a picture of the marathon runners going down Boyleston outside her office window and it looked like a beautiful day for a marathon in Boston.

My thought was that there was a gunman loose on her campus, in Boston, since there has been many shootings on campuses in the past few years.  We hadn't had the radio on but immediately turned it on, scanning furiously through the stations to get word of what was happening. We couldn't find out anything.

  Then I walked into the restaurant and the TV there was covering it. I had to pull myself away from it to get my head back into the frame of mind to work with this advertiser on the renewal of her ad. It was pretty tough to pull my thoughts together. Cell phone service was cut in Boston so my daughter wasn't able to text anymore from her phone but she was able to get a message to me from another phone that she was ok and was on her way home.

When something like this happens, it's really hard to wrap our heads around it. I truly believe that Americans are loving and caring people who look out for another and come together when things like this happen. Our life on the road, since 2007 confirms this. We've always felt safe and have seen many times where people rise to the occasion to help one another. In 2000, I took a trip, by myself, from Pennsylvania to the heartland of America, on my trike. I couldn't even begin to tell you how many women came up to me, when I would stop at rest areas to stretch, and asked if I was truly traveling alone and wasn't I afraid. I wasn't and told them so. So many people do not step out of their comfort zone to try anything new or go somewhere they haven't been to because of fear of the unknown. If it was known to you....it wouldn't be as big a gift to you. Do not be afraid of one another, of new things, of new experiences, of life ! Live it fully and in the moment. Be vigilant of your surroundings....be confident and act wisely but don't let the fear of the unknown or "what might be"  keep you stuck. There is so much good in this world and so much love to share with others. Keep the faith that tomorrow will be a better day and that we'll get through this together. Our hearts go out to those who have lost their lives or were injured. Hold them in your thoughts and prayers but don't let today's events keep you from stepping out, reaching out and being the person that you were meant to be. Go out and share yourself with the world.....

Clydesdales

Linda found a neat thing for us to go check out today in nearby Yukon, OK. Other than seeing some beautiful horses, the other neat part of it was that these magnificent creatures are owned by Bob Funk, who owns Express Employment. When we first went on the road, the second winter out we worked at Amazon's fulfillment center in Coffeyville, Kansas. The company that recruited all of the workampers for Amazon was an Express Employment franchise. Here is a great video I found that explains how Bob came to get into the Clydesdale business and what they are used for. It's 10 minutes long but very informative and you can see the horses in action.

Linda, in front of the barn with the Clydesdale metal sculpture....it's made out of horseshoes. It was really neat !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's the Clydesdales' ride....a tractor trailer for the horses and their carriage. They travel all over the US in this....gone 200 days out of the year to do events. All of the money raised from their events goes to the Children's Miracle Network.

The barn is located on a huge piece of property in Yukon, OK. From the numbers of families that were there today, it must be a popular destination for kids. They like to open the little doors, on each horses' stall, to pet the gentle giant inside.

If you go to their website http://www.expressclydesdales.com/ 

there is some neat info on the whole operation.

Check it out....

Blogger Labels: Clydesdales,

Sunday

The sun popped out for just a few minutes this morning and has made itself scarce ever since. Supposed to be cloudy today with storms (and chance of severe ones) moving in over the next day or so with highest chance of storms Tuesday night into Wednesday.

Yesterday we went to Sprouts, a new grocery store that opened in Norman, to get some groceries. They are having some great grand opening specials like eggs for .99/dozen and avocados are 3 for $1. They have a full line up of Applegate products which we love like Grass Fed pure Beef Hotdogs with no nitrites or nitrates and no fillers. They taste great and they also have all of their sliced meats like ham, turkey and roast beef that are not cured and have no chemicals, etc. Same with their bacon....all great products and we've never seen so many Applegate products in one store (not even at Trader Joe's). They have ample supplies of fresh veggies in attractive displays and Sprouts are located in eight states. Check and see if there's one near you. We also made a trip to Sam's Club to get some office supplies since we'll be headed to areas where there won't be any Sam's Clubs to get ink for our printer or laminating sheets. Linda and I made bets on what our receipt total would be. Oh brother, neither one of us  was even close. $358 later we were out of there with a frig full of food and all the office supplies we need for a couple months.

Spring is coming to Oklahoma and the RVers are waking up to the fact that it's time to go camping. The park had lots of campers and tents this weekend. Everyone is starting to pack up to go home this morning. It will quiet down by this afternoon and we'll be able to sit outside and watch the boaters on the lake. Even late last night I could see lights from boats (and hear their loud motors roaring) as they were still out on the lake enjoying the warm evening. It stayed in the 60's all night and is supposed to reach the mid 70's today. Yesterday was gorgeous in the 70's with a cool breeze and lots of sunshine. Going to be mostly cloudy today so the temps might struggle a bit to get into the 70's. The rising temps will fuel the chance of severe springtime storms.

On Thursday we move to Twin Fountains RV Resort in Oklahoma City. Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend and recharging for the start of a new work week.