Oklahoma – TooBusyForWork

The things I forget each time we start a trip

I know I said I didn’t plan on posting again, but I thought this topic would be a good one to write down so I can look at it before our summer trip. Of course, I’ll probably forget, but I will attempt it anyway.

1. The clothes hangers in the close need to be hung backwards. If I hand them normally they fall off with the first big bump. I am not sure why the direction is important, but it is. Maybe my physicist son could tell me, but I sure can’t figure it out.

2. The things you think should stay on the counter won’t stay, but the things that seem movable will stay exactly put. This is another thing I don’t understand at all. I will put two items on the bathroom counter, one of the most stable spots in the motorhome because it is over the back wheels. One of them will stay exactly where I put it, and the other one will be on the floor. Can’t figure this one out either.

3. It takes a lot, lot, lot longer than you think to rinse the RV antifreeze out of the water lines. Kevin tried to do it at home before we left, and he swears he left each faucet on at least 5 minutes. They all still taste like antifreeze! Luckily RV antifreeze isn’t harmful, but it sure doesn’t taste good. We really do need to plan on staying in a full hookup campground the first night so we can get the lines really flushed.

4. Don’t be in so much of a hurry to start on your trip that you say “I’ll put that up when we get to our first overnight spot.” No, no you won’t. You will be tired and thinking about those water lines. Put things in their place first.

I am sure I will think of even more things soon, but this is a good start.

Oh, and I re-sized the pictures I got of the cats that I didn’t have available for the last post.

Look at the pouch on Luna! She is 11.5 pounds

Minnie loves her treats. She is just 7.5 pounds.

As for where we have spent the nights, we spent Boxing Day (26 December) at the Elks Lodge in Cameron, MO. The advertised electric sites were no where to be found, and the two other rigs there had obviously be there a long time. Not a fan. The second night we spent at the Elks Lodge in Chickasha, OK. It was a long day since there was a big storm coming in behind us. This was another dry camp, but the parking lot was big enough we didn’t have to unhitch. No drinks at the lodge because they allow smoking – ugh. Tonight we made a 400+ mile drive to get to Monahan, TX, staying at SJ Family RV Park. It looks like we outran the storm at least. We wanted to spend the night at the Monahan Sand Dunes State park, but they were full. This place is a real dump, but it is also only $25/night. I would gladly have spent twice the amount for a nicer place, but Kevin had already arranged this one. It is the first time in a long time that we have locked everything up tight! Tomorrow’s plan is to be at the Elks Lodge in Las Cruces, FHU hopefully. We want to do laundry before arriving in Quartzsite, so I am hoping we can get that done tomorrow.

Now back to practicing the ukulele. I still have trouble transitioning to an F chord.

Finally in Red Bay, AL again

No pictures in this post.

After the Elks Lodge we chose to stay at a KOA west of El Reno, OK for a night. We got some laundry done, cleaned the tanks, and generally reveled in the idea of unlimited water LOL! The next night was at the Grand Casino parking lot outside Shawnee, OK. We took a short day because we really, really needed to get the motorhome washed! There was a Blue Beacon on I-40 in western Oklahoma City, so we took the time to get it washed. It is always an hour or more, because they are always busy. But the Casino was an awful place to spend the night. We had been in such quiet places for months that all the noise and lights kept me from sleeping well at all. Ugh. I begged Kevin for no more parking lots, so we stayed the next two nights at Corps of Engineers campgrounds, one in Russellville, AR (Old Post Park) and last night outside Hernando, MS (Hernando Point). Both were lovely and quiet.

Hernando Point was where we found out the truck’s battery was 100% dead! Kevin tried to charge it with the MH and the battery cables we had, but they were cheap ones and didn’t do a good job. So off we went to the next bigger town, the metropolis of Senatobia, MS population 8,500. Of course it was 20 miles from the campground! We made it to an auto parts store, but they didn’t have the booster and cables Kevin wanted, so he ended up at a Walmart nearby. Hard to park a MH at the auto parts store, so I parked on the street and he walked to the stores. Got back to the campground well after 6:00pm, and we started the generator and the new charger to get things working. We didn’t want to leave the truck, parked in a closed boat ramp area, so the CG host said we could just boondock in the lot instead of the site we had reserved. By 9:00 pm the truck was 40% charged, and we turned off the generator. The next morning Kevin charged the truck a bit more, then he drove the truck to Red Bay while I followed in the motorhome. Once we got here, he was able to isolate the charging line error in the umbilical that connects the powered items in the truck to the motorhome. He will fix that first, then he’ll see about getting a new battery for the truck. It has been my experience that once a battery is completely exhausted, it is not reliable in cold weather or under loads. If we were in civilization all the time, I wouldn’t worry because you can always find someone to give you a jump, but that is NOT where we generally stay!

So tomorrow Kevin gets to rewire umbilical cords (dead one and the spare which was from the Jeep). Should keep him busy. I intend on getting a bunch of oven mitt blanks quilted, ready for cutting on the Accuquilt. He will probably finish first!

This next week is for getting hte motorhome worked on. We have some body work (oops!), getting some slipcovers for the pilot and co-pilot chairs, covers for our dining chairs, and replacing the headboard fabric. We will also get our yearly engine, chassis service, and generator service plus a real detail job on the MH. There are a few minor things we are getting repaired too, but just little nits and lice stuff. However we have to be at the body shop ten miles away at 6:00am! Shiver!

Iowa – home again first time in 2025

It was time to get home. Always something to look forward to, and something we regret since we love the Southwest so much. I did some serious medication and lots of heating pad use, and I was able to drive semi-comfortably.

We left Monument Valley and went to Page, AZ, staying at the Elks Lodge 4 April. It was a gravel parking lot, and they charged $15 for dry camping. I thought that was fairly high, but, then again, Page is a big vacation spot. Very friendly people though. The next night we went to the Twin Arrows Casino outside Flagstaff, AZ. It is always an easy spot to stay, free, and not too noisy. On 6 April we spent the night at Santa Rosa State Park, NM. Lovely place. It is a bit of a pain to get to, but worth it for a beautiful and quiet spot. We thought about staying two nights, but there was weather coming in, so we kept going.

Monday saw us all the way through Texas and into Elk City, OK where we spent the night at the Elks Lodge. Again it had no hookups, but we were able to find a nice spot. We got to Oklahoma City fairly early on Tuesday. We stayed at the Edmond Elks Lodge. Not very nice due to crowding. We could hear a lot of conversations from surrounding coaches! We stayed two days because a group of elementary and high school friends were getting together. I keep forgetting how little I have in common with the people I went to high school with! I think this will be the last time I try to get together with them. Life definitely does go on.

We spent 10 April on the trip at the Kansas Star Casino south of Wichita. Great place to spend a quiet night for free. The lot we stayed in was gravel, but it was pretty flat and relatively unoccupied. There is an alternative spot closer to the casino that was asphalt, but it was slightly more occupied. Our last night was spent at the Walmart in Osceola, IA. Lots of reefers running all night, but it was handy. A bad wind was coming, so we left early and headed straight home.

We got here this morning and put the motorhome at Big Woods Lake County Park. We are about half unpacked, and we will finish tomorrow. The cats are enjoying the space. Each of them is rubbing their faces over pretty much every surface, marking the place as theirs after so long.

With the new RZR and tariffs being on and off, Kevin has ordered all kinds of things for it. We had them delivered to my oldest son’s place. A lot of things are big (front and rear windshields, bumper, etc.), and our son has joked that he will give us the bill for the storage unit the items required! He also said we owe the poor UPS guy who has to walk up 20 steps or so to their front door! Kevin will be fully employed getting everything put on. I have a list of things to quilt, and I need to get them done before we leave again around Memorial Day, so most posts going forward will probably be quilt-related.

Eclipse then home

We woke to a cloudy morning on 8 April. It didn’t look promising for viewing. Kevin kept watching the cloud cover on weather apps, and just before totality we quickly drove 20 miles northwest. We got amazingly lucky, and the clouds parted just enough to view totality! There were still some high thin clouds, but we could see the “Diamond ring” and then the darkness fell. All the birds stopped singing, and even the insects stopped their sounds. Very odd, but just like what we observed during the 2017 eclipse in Idaho. Soon it was over, and we got absolutely no good pictures! We were rushing so much to get to a clear spot we had no time to set up gear. Oh well I have memories.

We spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night at the RV park in so-so weather. We spent Thursday, 11 April at the Walmart in Abilene. Nice spot for an overnight parking location. We spent Friday at Mustang RV Park in Oklahoma, leaving very early after deciding to make a run for home because of a bad storm coming in. We made it to the KOA in Topeka, KS on Saturday, then home on Sunday. We put the motorhome at our local county park, open but without water. We were too tired to unpack, so we just slept there that night. Monday and Tuesday were unpacking – ugh. It always seems a lot more trouble to unpack than to pack. But we are now home, and the cats adjusted quickly. I think they like the extra space for their zoomies. They run from the bedroom through the living room and down the stairs multiple times a day.

April and May are our medical appointment times, and we are both pretty busy with our respective dentists and doctors. Kevin is getting his dental implant finished, and I have appointments with a dermatologist, ophthalmologist, and the pain medicine guy. I need a dentist appointment too. The pain med will require at least two follow up appointments, and the derm probably will too. Sigh.

My poor 830 Record sewing machine had to go to its doctor on Saturday too. I got a thread sound up at the stand and broke the needle. I can’t get it to do any free motion quilting since, and it broke 5 needles when I kept trying various repairs I knew about. It sews ok on straight stitching, but there is thread wadding up on the bottom when I do FMQ. Hopefully I just pulled something out of whack and the machine can easily (and inexpensively) come back from it. I will find out in a week or so. The RZR is in for some major preventative service too since we really don’t know how it was cared for before we got it. We have out a few thousand miles on it! We had a regular oil change done when needed, but this is a more extensive service. We find out that dollar amount next week too, depending on whether they fine anything serious. We don’t think so, but …

I won’t be posting much, normal for me when I am home. Staying in one place just isn’t as interesting as traveling. We do have one short trip planned with my son in law and his two children the week after Memorial Day. Then we will be leaving for our western summer in mid-June.

Off for snowbird trip 2023/24

We had a fabulous Christmas hanging with the kids and grandkids. Kevin got his 3D printer going and made some fabulous decorations. I apologize for the remnant threads; I got too excited to notice them.

The pattern describes it as a snow globe

We didn’t put up the big tree, but Kevin made sure we had our presents under a lot of trees. Most of these were actually experiments with his new printer he got (early) for Christmas. It is a newer Ender 3 that goes with us in the motorhome.

We actually left the house on Boxing Day just after noon. Since we weren’t having folks over to our house for the holidays, we had more time to pack and sort. One of the advantages of having a son and DIL nearby with a big house who likes to cook is they host at least one of the big holidays. This year they chose Christmas. We ended up spending the first night in the Lakeside Casino RV park. It is only a bit over 3 hours from home so we got in early enough to put water in the tanks. And guess what we woke up to the next morning?

Yup, 2” of wet heavy snow. It didn’t get any better later in the morning. We just waited for the highway to be clear and Kevin pushed the snow off the big slide toppers. The other slides are much smaller and came in without issue. Since we left so late we on,y made it to Emporia, KS where we stayed in a Walmart parking lot. The next day (Thursday) we made it to Texola, OK right on the Texas line. It is a small and very quiet campground, and we have stayed there a few times before. All through Missouri, Kansas, and most of Oklahoma we went through small snow squalls. They were never very heavy and they never lasted long. It was tedious though. I was thrilled when we made it to Amarillo and the sun came out. New Mexico was even more clear, and we are spending tonight in the American RV Park on the west side of Albuquerque. Tomorrow we hope to boondock outside Williams, AZ, and then make it to Quartzsite, AZ by Sunday. We plan on staying there for quite a bit of the winter.

I haven’t shown many pictures of my adorable cats recently, so here you go! They are sisters, but they don’t often snuggle up like this. Minnie, the tabby, was snuggled in the blanket, and Luna, the black one, just squished herself in.

On the way west

We are finally in Arizona. As I noted in the last post, we spent Sunday night at a Walmart in Arkansas, then Monday night in the parking lot of the Grand Casino in McLoud, OK (near Shawnee, OK). We were able to have dinner with my sister and nephew in Oklahoma City which was nice. We saw high winds and red flag warnings were getting posted, so we left a few minutes before 7:00 am to try to make it to Amarillo, TX before the storm got bad. We barely made it. The last 30 miles or so were pretty white knuckled driving, but we got to our reserved spot at the Big Texan Ranch RV Park. We ended up leaving all but one of the slides pulled in. The winds were steady at 30+, and the gusts were 60-65+. Definitely not the time to leave the slides out. For anyone not familiar with the big slides on a big motorhome, they all have some type of vinyl covering over the top of the slide. Ours are made out of Sunbrella, and they fit pretty snuggly. But the noise they make when they start flapping in heavy winds can drive you crazy, so we bring them in. It isn’t a safety thing.

The wind warning went through Wednesday night, so we decided to just stay put in Amarillo for two nights. We went to Palo Duro State Park, just a short distance from Amarillo. Kevin and I had taken Alan and Mark here the first year we owned a pop up camper. Mark was a toddler, and Alan was 5 or 6. We hadn’t been back since, so it was time. It was cold and the wind whipped right through us, so we definitely just drove through the park. Pretty nice scenery though.

From the visitor center looking into the sun and wind.

This is lush compared to the surrounding land

They had “glamping” available for $75/night

We made it to the Seligman, AZ KOA for tonight. Both days were more driving than I like, but there is snow coming in behind us in Flagstaff. This KOA must have gotten drenching rains recently, probably leftovers from the California deluges. There are puddles everywhere. But we are able to finish up laundry, fill up propane, take on fresh water and dump gray water, and generally get ready to dry camp for the next few weeks,

And just a hint of how lovely Arizona sunsets can be. No editing; these really were the colors.

On the road again

I said last time I have been in a blogging funk, so nothing has been written. I have been slowly recovering from my shoulder surgery, but it has been slow. I think the soreness is one of the reasons I haven’t been doing as much. We have been doing a few things though! We had Thanksgiving dinner with three of our kids and all six of the grandkids, something that hasn’t happened before! We went a bit non-traditional with a smoked turkey and sous vide sirloin. It was a much more relaxing approach, and I think I will repeat it in the future. We also had Christmas with all four kids, spouses, a girlfriend, and five of the grandkids. Even nicer was the meal was mostly made by my oldest son and his wife, both great cooks. It is time to start transferring host duties.

I have also been in a quilting funk. I have only finished one quilt for my daughter. I was lucky to get time with each of the older two granddaughters, 12, to do some sewing. They each got to pick out fabric for a pillowcase, and then they sewed it by themselves. They were appropriately pretty proud of themselves.

We couldn’t leave right after Christmas because I needed to get a laser treatment on my eye. Nothing critical, just clearing out some film behind the cataract lens. Then we had snow and ice, so we didn’t leave until 30 December. We made it only to Lakeside Casino Campground in Osceola, IA to get the rig dewinterized and filled up with water. The campground has definitely had better days, but it is open all year and in a convenient location for getting things set for the trip.

Bad weather was dogging us, so instead of the two days we planned on to Oklahoma City, we pushed through the 500+ miles in one day. We decided we would much rather be stuck two or three days there rather than somewhere along the road. Good thing because we made it just before very cold weather with sleet and ice! And guess what else we found wrong with the rig? The thermostatically controlled outlet for the wet bay stopped working, and we didn’t have good luck with temps going to mid single digits. Kevin tried some other options like an incandescent trouble light and a heating pad, but we had frozen water by the morning of 2 January. Sigh. I looked at Kevin and said “I want to go south!” So we did. We chose to leave OKC and headed to Abilene, TX. By noon we had water again, and by 3:00 or so we were set up at the KOA. Nice place. While we aren’t far off I-20, I don’t hear the traffic.

We decided to stay 2 nights in Abilene to throughly warm ourselves up. Today we went to the Frontier Texas Museum, and it was fabulous! It has multi-media interpretive displays showing the viewpoints and experiences of the natives and the Anglos. Lots of fascinating immersive exhibits, and I highly, highly recommend it. I also got a bunch of equilateral triangles cut with my Accuquilt for use as what I call “mindless sewing”, an easy way to sew while traveling. I also have a 4” Drunkard’s Path die along with a bunch of fat quarters of fabric to cut. I will use the scraps from that to make more triangles later. The DP definitely isn’t mindless, but I do really like the design. Hopefully I can get two lap quilts done by the time we get to the FMCA rally at the end of the March. They always collect quilts for a local charity in the area of the rally.

Tomorrow we are heading farther down the road, but only 200 miles so we stop ahead of some heavy winds. I promise to post more!

End of 49ers Encampment and heading home

Warning – another picture heavy post!

We finally got all the work done on the Jeep, and it was expensive. Just part of the joy of MH ownership, and we have been pretty lucky until now. There has been so much travel to Las Vegas that we really didn’t want to do a lot more travel. That is the excuse I am going to give for not hitting the big tourist spots in Death Valley this time. We didn’t even do any of the 4WD trips! We did get to some of the historical presentations, all the music acts, and some other presentations.

We also took time to buy a Blackstone grill while in Las Vegas. Kevin has been looking at them, and the Camping World there had one at last year’s price, a significant savings. So far we are enjoying it. Kevin has made hamburgers, fajitas, and grilled potatoes. It is a bit of a pain to clean, but that should get better as the seasoning improves. Kevin installed a propane tap to the MH so it is easy to attach an external device to the MH’s propane tank instead of having to use a separate propane bottle – handy.

We headed into Beatty, NV one day to go to their famous candy store. And of course we bought a bunch of nuts and candy. They have some things hard to find anywhere else. Right at the edge of Beatty we found two of the famous donkeys. They are a standard sight here, and very popular with tourists. They are truly a dreadful thing in the wild though, displacing the native big horn sleep.

Heading back to the campground, I took some pictures of Death Valley at sunset.

Near the bottom of Sunrise Pass looking south

There really is no way of showing the vastness of the park. The picture above shows probably 30 miles.

From the Texas Springs Road showing the salt pan to the north

Looking from Texas Springs Road above Sunset Campground, NPS Visitor Center foreground right.

The huge alluvial fans coming from the mountains are amazing, this one shown above is probably 5-7 miles wide. They are a very distinctive feature of the park, and they show up everywhere.

With all the beauty around us, you don’t generally stay at the campground to “camp”. It is more a place to rejuvenate, eat, and sleep. That’s good because the campground is basically a big gravel parking lot. It is cheap though – $7.00 a night with our senior pass. There are flush toilets (no showers) plus a dump station with fresh water. This year there weren’t nearly as many people attending. They didn’t even open the first overflow camp area until Thursday, and normally they have all three overflows open and occupied by Monday or Tuesday.

Another thing about the Furnace Creek area is the legendary fuel prices, generally the most expensive in the country.

Also in the park (but regulated by NPS contract), the price for regular gasoline is $4.86 at Stovepipe Wells. Outside the park in Nevada at the casino, the price was $3.88. It is well worth the time to drive the 35 miles to Nevada! The Furnace Creek prices are the best advertisement I know of against unbridled capitalist greed. Stovepipe Wells is just as far from distribution sources, and they charge more than $2 per gallon less.

One thing nice about Nevada and California is they allow both medical and recreational sale of cannabis. I was able to refill the gummies I use to manage the residual pain in my shoulder for a much better price than I can going to Illinois at home. Using them I have been able to stop the ibuprofen that I have been on since surgery, giving my belly a much wanted relief. I take 10 mg each night, and I also take CBD gummies to reduce inflammation. The combination has really helped. I have to use the gummies because there is absolutely no way I am smoking anything!

Getting back to the Encampment, the biggest event is always when the wagon train comes in. This year they had 14 wagons travel the 100 miles from the far southern edge of the park to Furnace Creek. I will just post the pictures without captions because they are pretty self-explanatory. They are lead in by the Marine mounted color guard from 29 Palms. Each of the color guards trains their own horse, chosen from mustangs sold by the BLM. Impressive!

We left Death Valley on Sunday. We spent Sunday night at the Seligman, AZ KOA. Monday we stayed at Lavaland RV Park in Grants (nice brewery associated with it), Tuesday and Wednesday we were at the Tucumcari KOA waiting out a wind storm, and tonight we are at Mustang Run RV Park on the west side of Oklahoma City. We will spend Friday night at a Boondockers Welcome site near Kansas City, then home!

Oklahoma and into Texas and New Mexico

We spent the last day, 9 June, at Canton Lake in Oklahoma driving to Boiling Springs State Park. The park doesn’t have hot springs like the name implies, but it has bubbly natural springs that have been an attraction for thousands of years. The park is small, and it was really, really hot, so we mostly just drove through, stopping at some of the sights. The park facilities were mostly built by the CCC in the 1930s. The big pool and wading pool have had updates since them, but the buildings are still mostly CCC work. The National Park Service did the architectural work, and it is pretty obvious.

A church group was enjoying the big conference center, also built by the CCC

A wonderful old water tower built by CCC

We left Canton for our first Boondocker’s Welcome stay on 10 June. We stayed at a working ranch just barely into Texas off I-40. BW is a subscription service for overnight stays offered by volunteer hosts. There is a $50/year charge for the service, but no charge for the location unless there are other amenities offered. In our case, we got a halfway level site with a gravel base, 50 amp service (!), and nice views for no cost. The hosts get “paid” with a membership in BW themselves. The electrical service was nice because it was still hotter than hell! We could have used our generator of course, but the lack of noise was nice. I gave them a thank you gift – two bowl cozies made with a great camper fabric with a red background. It turned out the wife of the couple was also a member of the FB group RV Quilters, just like me. We had a nice chat.

The forecast was for significant wind on 11 June, so we left our BW site by 7:15 to get as much driving as possible in before the winds got extra bad. It was over 300 miles to Raton, our next spot, and some of it was white knuckle driving. I can handle 20-25mph steady winds without issue, and up to 30-35 in a pinch, but we eventually got winds so gusty we had to pull off the road for a couple of hours. It was NOT a fun drive, but we eventually made it.

The Raton KOA is the lowest level of KOA, a Journey. This category is for locations oriented towards those passing through, not those looking for many amenities. They gave us a tight 30 amp back-in site with nice trees for shade, but we had to position the rig very carefully to fit; it was not designed for a 40’, 4 slide motorhome! We made it, but there was no option to open the awning! Luckily the trees were quite nice, and I sat in the shade for a few hours each day. This KPA has pull-through and 50 amp sites available, but those are held for the overnighters. It was rather amazing watching the park transition from mostly empty to completely full in 3 hours each day. Every morning the first folks started leaving around 6:00 am (yes, I wake up ridiculously early!), and the park was empty again by 10:00.

Since the drive in was so tough, we ate dinner at the Colefax Ale Cellar, a brewery with good sandwiches and better beer. We ended up buying some of their great dark beer to take with us. It is hard being a stout and ale drinker in a world of IPAs, but they had some good ones.

We got around the next day to drive to a long loop to Cimaron, Eagle Next, Red River, and Taos. It was a great trip! I always stop and read all the historic markers, and we accidentally found one about the town of Dawson, an old Phelps-Dodge mining town. What a serendipitous find! The drive in was lovely. The community was a classic company town with a population of 6,000. When the mines closed in 1950, some parts went to other company towns but most was just razed and the debris removed.

The community was infamous for two horrific mine explosions, one in 1913 and another in 1923 with a total of 383 miners killed. The company provided the metal crosses since so many were immigrants away from their families. Some families added traditional markers later. The cemetery is maintained by an old settlers group, and they have big gatherings every 2 years.

The old cemetery was well kept and poignant

I have really bad internet here, so I will leave the rest of our trip for another post.

Gilcrease Museum

Today’s visit was to Tulsa, OK and the Gilcrease Museum. Thomas Gilcrease was an enrolled member of the Creek nation who became one of the numerous oil magnates in eastern Oklahoma when oil was discovered on his family land. He was fabulously rich, but his passion was for the history of the Americas. He collected hundreds of thousands of items, buying entire collections when he could. There were paintings, sculptures, pottery, textiles, and an incredibly valuable collection of paper and books. He was in debt in 1954 and offered the entire collection to the city of Tulsa for a greatly reduced price of $2.5M, promising to pay even that back in the future. The museum is managed jointly by the University of Tulsa and the city of Tulsa. There are now over 500,000 items in the collection making it the largest collection of material regarding the Americas in the world.

When I was a child, I came to the museum. I remember most the wonderful impressionist paintings. At that time they had the material organized by type of artifact, so the paintings were all together. Now the museum is organized by what part of the Americas the material came from, a more helpful view IMHO. I will show a tiny bit of the wonderful items.

I said earlier how much I like Impressionists. This is a piece by Kevin Connywerdy (Kiowa/Comanche) called Touched by the Spiritt

This was one of my favorite modern paintings

Then there was this one by a Portuguese Hawaiian, Harry Fonseca) of a Hopi subject, Three Coyote Koshare. What a great take on the legend!

This is the first painting in the gallery of Native American ethnography – a modern view

Then there are the landscape. Blow this one to the largest size you can to see the beautiful rendition of a prairie scene.

One of the Native American impressionists

Traditional paintings are also in the collection.

Very traditional painting of a Crow encampment

Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the ruling the agreed the Cherokees were an independent nation whose treaty rights should be respected. Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears where thousands died. It was painted by the nephew of the famous founder of Methodism, John Wesley, who raised him.

Chief Justice John Marshall by John Wesley Jarvis

I live in Black Hawk County in Iowa, named in honor of this Sac and Fox chief.

Chief Black Hawk and his son whirling Thunder, also by John Wesley Jarvis

Classic American landscape artists are well represented like this one from John Singer Sargent.

But my favorite of the landscapes had to be this study of the Grand Canyon. The photo I took of the attribution is too blurry for me to make it out!

My favorite of the Grand Canyon landscapes

And then there is sculpture. The Gilcrease owns 18 of the 22 bronze sculptures created by Frederic Remington. They are wonderful, but I found this life-mask of Abraham Lincoln’s face and hands more moving.

There is a nicely done exhibition of artifacts from the Pacific Northwest. This raven effigy made from a whale vertebrae was amazing.

There was an entire wall of original paintings by Audubon. I chose the American Turkey to photograph.

Again I was lucky my back held out, but I sorely regretted not being able to spend more time just standing and enjoying the individual items. We spent 2 hours, and it wasn’t nearly enough. It was also raining so we didn’t go see the historic gardens. Obviously I need another visit!