Eleven months ago when we left on our big westerly loop of the United States, the only thing scheduled for sure was that we would be back in Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. We are blessed that our entire family got to be together for the holiday. We had beautiful weather, allowing us to snap some pictures outside. One of those snaps should be part of a Christmas letter.
Thanksgiving is a great holiday to spend in Beaver, Oklahoma, where many of the Engelmans gather at the ranch where Mark was raised.
Mark's 89-year-old Mother spear-headed the Thanksgiving feast that 33 of us enjoyed together. That evening we enjoyed a 3-hour family sing-a-long led by some of the most talented musicians we know.
It's a goose-bump experience to be in the circle of Engelmans when the Doxology is sung as the prayer before a meal! We love spending this family time with people we don't get to see often since we are on the road. Another family tradition is spending some time playing in the hay. We climbed to the top of the square bales stacked under the hay shed.
But the real fun is climbing onto the round bales. That's Mark and our youngest son, Blake, on the right of the picture below. The picture also includes parts of three generations climbing on the bales today.
This year the round bales were placed with spaces between the rows. Some members of the family didn't seem to have any problem jumping over that space.
Even though Denisa is pretty brave around mountains and ledges, she isn't good with jumping over chasms. She's older and wiser than some of the bale-jumpers, and it is taking some coaching and coaxing to get her to jump over this abyss.
She finally made the jump. But you might notice that her foot barely made it onto the bale. It wasn't pretty, but she got lots of encouragement.
Most of the group was racing along the rows and leaping over those giant gaps in a raucous game of tag. You might notice that Denisa is standing on the right, refereeing the game because she clearly is not agile enough to participate in this wild game. On the other hand, Mark and Blake are in the middle of it.
Clearly, the safest place to watch this game is from the ground. After falling off the bales in a wild chase, Mark's brother is watching from the four-wheeler. Also watching is Mark's Mother--the fourth generation enjoying the beautiful weather out at the bales.
Another fun activity is feeding the two bottle-calves living in the pens close to the barn. One was orphaned when her mother died, but the other calf was a twin. We found that cows aren't good at raising two calves, so one of the twins has to be raised at the barn.
We are thankful for this time to enjoy our family. We have many blessings, and we are glad for a day to be reminded of how good it is to have quality family time. We have wandered into another version of God's wonders!
On the last leg of our journey home to Oklahoma, we drove through the Texas panhandle on a cloudy day. It's November and it looks like snow here. But it's actually miles and miles of cotton fields ready to be picked. We honestly don't remember this part of the country growing so much cotton.
After miles of hill-less driving where you can see the horizon forever, we passed the next state sign. We are officially back in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma panhandle is only 40 miles wide, so we could cross into another state pretty fast.
But we won't be crossing another state line for a while. Instead, the motor home is now parked on the ranch at Mark's parents' house.
Here we have a view of the flock of turkeys out one window. . .
and the herd bulls out the other.
Because we won't be living in the motor home for a while, we cleaned out every bit of food and turned off the refrigerator. We don't want to leave anything that would tempt mice into the motor home. In the past, we have purchased a product called "Fresh Cab" that is widely recommended for keeping mice out of RVs. We couldn't find it anywhere, and learned that it is on back-order after a batch was recalled. So this year we are trying a couple new products in hopes of dissuading mice looking for a warm home for the winter.
We have family events planned for the next six weeks. So we are going to stop wandering until after Christmas. We plan to enjoy spending time with some special people that we have missed during our 10-month-long circle around the western United States this year. In the meantime, we are enjoying some beautiful Oklahoma sunsets, and remembering how it feels to live in one place for a little while.
We left Palo Duro Canyon and made our way out of the state park on that steep 10% grade to the high plains of Texas. Our next destination is Panhandle, Texas, where Mark's 92-year-old Aunt Eva lives. We should have taken a picture of Eva, who still lives by herself in her home. But we weren't there very long before it was time to go to the pep rally. It's the last football game of the regular season, and Eva's great-granddaughter is a high school cheerleader. She's up on stage encouraging the entire student body to give the football boys the loudest send-off possible. It's been a while since we've been to a pep rally, so it was a fun bit of Texas football fun.
But our final destination is a special camping spot overlooking Lake Meredith.
Our cousins Kent and Lynn have a full-hookup RV site beside their house overlooking the lake. They backed up their motor home so we could fit our rig beside the electric plug and we were set for the night!
We got a tour of their acreage overlooking the lake before a west Texas sunset lit up the sky. Then we went inside and had a wonderful meal and lots of good visiting.
This little piece of the Texas panhandle has a special resource not found anywhere else, and we're headed to Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument to see it for ourselves. We called the visitor center to make a reservation for the ranger-led hike at 10:00. It involved a two-mile drive, and then a one-mile hike through these hills.
After a mile of mostly up-hill walking, the round common-looking stones turned into these jagged flint rocks.
We had never seen a big flint boulders before. This flint was better than gold to the Indians that lived on these plains hundreds of years ago. Flint is a very hard rock that can be shaped into arrowheads and spears for hunting. It will hold a razor-sharp edge that can be lethal. Before the days of metal, it was the best cutting edge available.
With mineral deposits that have added streaks of color in the stone, Alibates flint is also beautiful.
Most of the flint we are finding on the ground are pieces with cracks or impurities that make it unfit for fashioning it into a tool. The Indians from this area mined the best pieces, chipping it into a flat blank about the size of a deck of cards. That piece was then traded to other tribes for the beads or shells or pelts prevalent in other areas. Because of this trading process, this Alibates flint can be found among native American artifacts hundred of miles away.
We love it when our travels weave together stories. Last week we visited the Blackwater Draw Museum in Clovis, New Mexico, seeing hundreds of arrowheads made from the flint mined from the quarries where we are now standing. Similarly, a month ago we visited the Navajo National Monument and saw weapons made from this flint mine. We also read about the "Long Walk" of the Navajos, and then weeks later traveled to Bosque Redondo where the walk ended. It's like reading a history book with field trips that bring it all to life for us.
We are enjoying some fine weather for November. This snake was also enjoying the sunshine, even though he wasn't moving very fast on our trail. This little guy was less than two feet long, but he was centered on the trail to absorb as much warmth as possible.
We only had four people in our ranger-led tour of the flint quarries, and it was fun to exchange stories with the other two avid hikers. The ranger told us that it is fine to pick up and look at the flint on the national monument, but it is illegal to take any home. The area is very closely monitored with locked gates and rangers to preserve this piece of history for others to experience.
Again, we enjoyed a little-known national monument. Even though we are getting very close to where we lived most of our lives, we had never even heard of Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument. Between the flint and family, it was a great stop for us in the Texas panhandle.
On our last day at Palo Duro Canyon, we were greeted by this roadrunner. We've seen several of these guys running down the road, but today he was meandering through our campground in the nice weather.
We too are enjoying the warmer temperatures and sun shine. Mark has been looking longingly at that hill behind our camp site since we arrived. As you can see from the picture below, he has decided to climb it today. He's standing in front of that large boulder close to the top.
From there we can see the motor home and our neighbors in the campground below. We are enjoying plenty of space, and a private covered picnic table here in Mesquite campground at Palo Duro Canyon State Park. We also have found that this is about the only place down in the canyon that has AT&T phone service and an over-the-air television signal.
Mark looks good up at the top standing against that bright blue sky. He assured Denisa that it was an easy climb, so she joined him up there.
That hill is made up of round clay pebbles that we disdainfully call "roll-ders." Trying to hike downhill is akin to rollerskating at an 80-degree angle. It was tough getting down and we entertained several of our neighbors who were pretty sure we were nuts for trying it.
The real hike planned for the day is to the state park's iconic rock formation--The Lighthouse. It's a 2.7 mile hike across the canyon floor on a relatively flat trail. We were really disappointed when we got to the end of the trail, with no lighthouse in sight.
It's a good thing that we had read that this is where the real work begins. We saw other hikers turn around at the "end of trail" sign, but we knew to head straight up the hill in front of us.
It was a tough scramble, but the pay-off was good. We could see the light(house) at the end of the tunnel. We have proof that we made it, as you can see Denisa standing in front of Lighthouse Rock in the picture below.
Once we climbed to this level, there was a nice flat cap-stone walkway that connected it to other rock formations.
It was a grand place to be on a pretty weather afternoon in November!
Mark scrambled up beside another of the tall rocks in this part of the canyon for another grand view.
Mark was pretty sure we could find an easier way down, so we followed the wash for a while. It looks like this wash turns into a waterfall when it rains here in the canyon. So much for our easy way down.
This time of year it's tough to find the pretty flower blooms that Denisa loves. But some of the cactus here have turned a delicate color of pink that is as pretty as a flower.
Those cactus also make a good hiding place for this long bullsnake trying to soak up a little sunshine after several cold days.
We were glad to see his round eyes and thumb-shaped head--indicators that he was a non-venomous snake.
After we scrambled down more roll-ders we finally got back to the trail. But now we were met with another kind of danger--mountain bikers! It's scary to meet one riding fast around a blind curve, or have one catch up with you coming over a hill. An unusually large number of bikers were on the trails today, since Palo Duro is hosting their annual bike marathon this weekend. In fact, we have to leave because all the camping spots have been reserved by bikers. To tell you the truth, after the anxiety of hiking with so many two-wheelers on the trail today, we're content to leave the canyon and the trails to the 200 mountain bikers that will be racing here tomorrow.
As we drove back to our campground, we saw a large flock of turkeys. So we had some good wildlife sightings today. We started and ended our day with bird sightings at Palo Duro Canyon. We've enjoyed our four days here, but we're ready to head down the road tomorrow.
We had some cool and windy weather while we were camping at Palo Duro Canyon, but we still got out to do some hiking. One afternoon we hiked the Rock Garden Trail, named for the huge boulders littering the bottom of the canyon in this area.
There are plenty of those boulders along the trail, just waiting for someone to scramble to the top for views as we climbed higher.
After a couple miles, we got to the top of the canyon wall, where we could see all around us. We don't have sunshine today, and jackets were greatly appreciated with the winds at the top. The trail continues along this rim for miles, and the only way to get here is up the Rock Garden Trail.
As we hiked along the rim, we saw some movement on the canyon wall below us. Are those big horn sheep?
Once we got a better look, we realized that these were not the big horn sheep we had seen in other parks this year. They are larger, with impressive shaggy hair hanging from their throats and front legs. These are aoudad, a north African sheep. A small herd was shipped to Texas in the 1950's and it is estimated that more than 25,000 now live in the United States.
We feel lucky to see these two big guys, as they blend in well with their surroundings. It was fun to watch them make their way across the steep canyon walls. It's hard to spot them in the picture below, as they are making their way across the rocky top of the canyon rim.
On these windy days, we also spent some time relaxing inside the motor home. Denisa got out our line dance music and got some exercise dancing inside. The picture also represents other rainy-day entertainment. You can see Denisa's piano on the far left of the picture, and Mark's entertainment is that old western movie playing on the television. We were shocked to find we had a reasonable over-the-air TV signal down in the canyon.
On another day, we headed to the nearby town of Canyon, Texas. Mark has been shopping for new tires for our car, and we had them installed in Canyon. Between the miles we drive and tow the car, we are finding that tires wear out fast.
We were looking for a good indoor activity for a cold day, so we headed to the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon. This is touted as the largest history museum in Texas, and we're pretty sure it would take several days to see everything. A large section on the oil and gas history of the Texas Panhandle includes a full-size drilling platform.
A large room explains the advent of the windmill. It was a perfect instrument to use the prevalent wind to bring water to this desert landscape.
There were rooms of dinosaur skeletons and Indian artifacts. We have been impressed with the immense size of the bison we have seen on several occasions this year. But the bison head on the far left looks small when compared to the skulls of its relatives that used to roam this Texas panhandle.
It looks like Denisa has sprouted horns, but she is really there to show just how big the Bison Latifrons was.
We've had some temperatures in the upper 20's at night, so we are running our gas heater to keep our water pipes from freezing. With day time temperatures in the 50's, fall is reminding us why we are usually heading south about now. But we see a trend of warmer temperatures coming, and we have one more hike planned in the canyon before we leave.
