Black Hills SD, Oklahoma City OK, Pharr TX

Greetings from Texas, we made it.........  Almost exactly two weeks on the road and we're suffering with 90+ degree Texas heat.  Oh well, we'll just have to tough it out.

It's nice to be settled down for a few months after a really amazing trip.  As I mentioned before we really enjoyed SD's Badlands and the Black Hills were beautiful.  We only stayed in the area for five days but we'll certainly be back and hopefully for a couple of weeks.  We had no idea what was there and were just awe struck with what we found.  I'd bet next weeks food budget we'll be slowly riding The Needles Highway on next summer's motorcycle tour.  If you've been there you know what I mean, if you haven't seen it get going.

We left SD for Oklahoma City for a few days of sight seeing and visiting with our friends Jim and Lois McDowell.  They treated us like royalty and we had a great time.  Thank you both so much.

We spent almost an entire afternoon at The Cowboy Museum.  We went there expecting to see lots of hats, boots, and shiney buckles.  NOT.  It would be easy to spend a couple of days in the museum, and it could be a very educational experience.  The history one can see and learn there is unbelievable.  I really enjoyed looking at the clothing, and weapons used by the US Army/Calvary dating back to the early 1800's.  They have all kinds of original eqipment, no reproductions, saddles, rifles, clothing, and on and on.  From there it moves forward through history right up to the current rodeo stars.

There is one entire section dedicated to movie equipment and the stars that used wore it.  As an example, I really enjoyed the movie "Quigley Down Under" and now Tom Selleck has donated a huge amount of the gear he used shooting the movie to the museum.  Yes - I did get to see a pair of Roy Rogers cowboy boots :-).
 
There is a ton of Native American history in there as well.  Bernie and I were blown away when we looked at a giant map of N. America that showed the dozens and dozens of different tribes that inhabited our entire continent and the general areas they lived on. 

There's a bunch of information on the buffalo herds and how they were hunted to the verge of etinction.  One comment that stuck in my head was an interview a Eastern newspaper did with a buffalo hunter who claimed to have shot 18000 (yes) buffalo by himself that week.  Just that one hunter.  The whole thing is mind blowing when taken in todays context.

Jim and Lois took us the the Oklahoma Memorial which is another amazing experience.  You stand there, on the very spot where 168 people died, in a split second, 15 years ago, and try to comprehend the magnitude of the event.  The memorial itself is an almost difficult experience.  It's beautiful, it's humbling, it's overwhelming, you can't help being touched when you see it.  For those that haven't seen it; they have set it up with brass and glass illuminated chairs, one chair for each victim.  To see 168 chairs lined up by the floor of the building they were on that terrible morning is tough enough, then you realize that the wee little chairs are for the children that died that day.  Will we go back? No, it's a tough one.  Are we glad we saw it? Yes.

So here we are at Tropic Star in Pharr for the fourth winter.  We were able to get on a lot we had picked out last spring and it's really nice.  We have a couple of palm trees out front, an orange tree at the front door, and a couple of huge __?__ trees out back.  Some of our friends are here and more are arriving all the time so it should be a fun winter.  Our neighbour to the back has been coming here for 33 years, is 86 years old, and just as spry as can be.  I was hanging a bird feeder tonight and he was out there telling me what kind of seed I should be using, before he invited us over for a drink.  Neat people.  The good news is I finally found someone that is more deaf than I am.  Ya, ya, ya, I know he's 86.

We talked to Bob and Lynn, our friends and dance instructors, tonight and it looks like we'll be "Dancing Wth The Stars" (in my dreams) in a few days.

Gotta go, thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment when you can.

Neal & Bernie