Vacationing in the Oklahoma Panhandle

We arrived in the panhandle of Oklahoma and parked the motorhome in the yard behind Mark's parents' house.  Instead of a view of mountains or lakes, it now has a view of corrals and horses.  Denisa has been enjoying feeding treats to some of the horses, and is getting more familiar with their likes and dislikes.  Her two favorite horses perk up when she walks up to the fence to see what goodies she is bringing them today.

 The motorhome is also surrounded by the greenest, plushest grass we can remember seeing here.  The month of May has served up a record amount of moisture in Oklahoma, and it continued to rain after we arrived.  We are enjoying the wide open skies of the Oklahoma panhandle!

It also looks like there could be a bountiful sand plum harvest this summer.  We don't remember ever seeing so many plums on a single stem.  It's almost enough to make us consider sticking around until they ripen.  But then the temperatures heated up into the 90's, and we decided to stick to our plan of spending the summer in the mountains.

Oklahoma has endured several years of drought conditions, where cattle had to be fed year round because there was not even enough moisture to grow buffalo grass in the pastures.  So it is certainly a beautiful sight to see the cattle enjoying the plush grass this summer.

We have been shuttling between our parents' house while we are staying in Beaver county.  We have enjoyed spending time with Mark's parents at Cap-o-Ranch,

as well as Denisa's Mother at the Janzen farm.  

Our parents are our most devoted blog readers, so it was fun to get to include them in a post!  We also have to include a picture of those prickly pear cacti that we have seen all our lives.  The Engelmann cactus also thrives here in the panhandle of Oklahoma.

We also made a trip to Weatherford, Oklahoma while we were in the state.  We took care of dentists appointments, mammograms, and most importantly--we got haircuts at our favorite shop.  We stopped by Southwestern Oklahoma State University to see our co-workers, and reassured them that retirement was indeed as good as we thought it would be.  We spent the night with our dear friend Patti, and were honored to be one of her first guests in her beautiful new home.
 
While we were there, we heard on the news that Oklahoma is ranked #50 among U.S. states in the natural disaster category.  Obviously famous for its tornadoes and spring storms, we won't usually be planning trips here in May.  But we planned our loop home this year in order to attend our son's graduation from medical school.  It made us a little nervous to have our home parked here in May, but we've owned a home in this state for over 25 years without tornado damage.  So even though we could think of other more touristy places to visit in May, we enjoyed very nice spring weather.  Just like us, the horses think the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.