Experiencing the Chisholm Trail

Broken Bow State Park, OK

After eating dinner and posting the blog last night, we decided to head to the wide open range where we had spotted the bison and prairie dogs earlier. Bingo! What a treat we had watching the bison migrate across the road, get frisky with each other and interact with their calves. The sunset over the wide open prairie was pretty spectacular too!

This morning we purposely got up earlier to do an "easy" bike ride in the park. Note to self, any bike route labeled easy with the name "Mt. Scott trail" one should take with a grain of salt. It was far from easy, but at least we got a good cardio work-out!
The wildflowers are abundant in this park and and it was beautiful to ride past fields of colors. We were also treated by seeing longhorn out grazing and more bison. Sweet!

After that little jaunt was out of the way, we headed for the Visitor Center and took in a movie and had fun with looking at all the exhibits. A park ranger did clear up for me what that sweet little red bird was last night. It was called a Summer Tanager. We've been to many National Parks and this Wildlife Refuge rates right up there with the best of them. In fact, I much preferred this to the Waterton Peace Park in Canada. The only thing that park had over this one was the lodge, but the camping and wildlife viewing were far superior here.

The big highlight of the day was stopping at the Chisholm Trail Heritage Center. If anyone is ever around Lawton, OK I definitely encourage you to check out this super fun museum. It was very interactive and we enjoyed roping cattle and learning all about the history of the Chisholm trail. There were also two theatres. One was an animatronic (think Abe Lincoln at Disneyland) little sketch with Jesse Chisholm and a cowboy, Tex, out on the range. The other was a real hoot!! We were seated with a gazillion school kids and watched a film about what it was like to drive cattle for 100 days on the trail. The kicker was that it was SUPER interactive. When it rained, water was sprinkled over us; when the wind blew on the prairie, we felt wind blowing on us; when the rain and thunder blew our seats shook; when bacon was frying, we were supposed to smell that (that part was a bit lame), but we definitely smelled all the wildflowers on the range. At the end of the movie we participated in a sing-a-long with the school kids. Tons of fun!!

For the majority of the day we drove across Oklahoma. It was interesting to see the topography change from dry and arid, to wide open prairie and then the lush rolling hills with swollen rivers and creeks of Eastern Oklahoma. We are camped tonight at the biggest state park I have ever camped in. It is enormous, with about 395 campsites spread out over 100's of acres. There is also cabins, restaurants, paddle boats, hay rides, train rides, tennis courts, golf course and goodness knows what else.

We are in a very wooded campground and poor Winnie is dwarfed by the 5th wheels and pick-ups. As I write this there is country music playing, smokers going and lots of "howdy-do's" and "thank-you ma'ams" We have definitely left the Southwest and have officially entered into the South. Perfect. Kinda getting us prepared for our venture into Arkansas tomorrow. I expect we've left the land of beef and will be entering into the land of pork bellies, hush puppies, grits and sweet tea.