Tulsa, Oklahoma

Sunday, Nov. 15th - Saturday, Nov.21st

Now this is what I call a theater!  Only six rows of seats, but oh what seats!  We went to two movies on Monday.  The new James Bond movie Spectre was pretty good and Love the Coopers was okay.

We drove around a little doing some exploring and found the Golden Driller at the River Spirit Expo center.  He was built in 1953 by a company in Ft. Worth for the Petro Expo.  He is 76 feet tall, the 4th tallest statue in the country and the official state monument.  He was voted one of the 10 quirkiest attractions in the U.S.

Mt. Hood (Oregon) by Albert Bierstadt 1880.  Tuesday we went to Gilcrease Museum, the world's largest, most comprehensive collection of fine art and artifacts of the American West.  There are theme gardens and statuary and walking trails on 23 acres of the museum's 460 acres nestled in the scenic Osage Hills of Tulsa.

Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains (California) by Albert Bierstadt 1880.  Thomas Gilcrease was a tribal member of the Creek Nation because of his mother's ancestry, which entitled him to an allotment of 160 acres about 20 miles south of Tulsa.  That land became part of one of Oklahoma's major oil fields.  He purchased a home in 1914 that is located on the museum grounds and lived there until his death in 1962.  In 1922 he founded Gilcrease Oil Company with headquarters in San Antonio and maintained an office in Europe.  

Meat's Not Meat Till It's in the Pan by Charles M. Russell 1915.  Gilcrease opened a gallery for public viewing on his Tulsa estate in 1949 and deeded his collection to the city in 1955.  Since 2008 it has been a partnership between the city and the University of Tulsa.  It's a really nice museum and we spent most of the day there.

The Aztecs believed human sacrifice was the most sacred gift they could offer the gods.  Spanish Conquistadors were horrified by this practice and promptly proceeded to destroy their empire and decimate their population.  Xipe Totec Effigy (1300-1521 CE) also known as "our lord the flayed one" was an Aztec deity of agricultural fertility and the idea of life-death-rebirth.  Priests of this god wore the flayed skins of sacrificial victims.  Double mouth and deep set eyes show this grisly ritual.

There was a special exhibit of some guy's collection of 1,500 bolo ties.  The precursor to the bolo tie was the scarf or neckerchief slide, simple rings or bands or more ornate metal cylinders.  In the 1920s some Native Americans made slides out of sheep's vertebrae, shaped like a steer head.  In 1932 Wrigley Chewing Gum Company acquired and sold sheep vertebrae scarf slides.  They were premiums for a CBS radio program they sponsored, Chief Wolf Paw.  There were lots of very elaborate, jeweled bolo ties with turquoise and silver.

At home in Mingo RV Park with a little artwork right at our campsite.  Three little bear cubs climbing up to the eagle's nest.

Native American family just a few steps away from our site.  There are members of 67 different tribes living in the state of Oklahoma.

We chose Wednesday to go to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, as it was food truck day there, with about a dozen different food trucks parked there with all kinds of yummy choices for lunch.  I had a fried wonton/cabbage salad that was wonderful.  It was a really good museum with lots of recordings and videos.  He wrote over 3,000 songs and they have over 10,000 pages in the archives with all of his stuff, including original lyrics, novels, short stories, plays, newspaper columns, poetry, artwork (watercolors, charcoals, pastels and ink), scrapbooks, photos, letters, concert flyers, etc.  His songs celebrate the beauty and bounty of America.  They are simple songs about democracy, human rights and economic equality.  He combined music and politics to become one of America's most well-known singers and social activists, think Oklahoma Hills where I was born.  Traveling the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, he amassed life experiences for his autobiography Bound For Glory and thousands of songs.  They also have stuff on Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, The Kingston Trio and lots of other musicians who were influenced by him.  Sooo, how does it feel to be out on your own, like a rollin' stone, just blowin' in the wind?  I really love it!  This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York Island and I highly recommend you get out and see it.   We're doing the best we can to see as much of it as we can.

  

Thursday we drove to Yale, Oklahoma for a little tour of Jim Thorpe's home.  In 1950 Jim was voted outstanding athlete of the first half of the 20th century.  He was still considered the world's greatest athlete in 2000 and was put on the Wheaties cereal box.  In 1912 at the Olympics in Sweden he won the 5-event pentathlon and the 10-event decathlon, which has never been done by another athlete.  The King of Sweden honored him as the greatest athlete in the world.  He played professional football from 1915 to 1920 with the Canton Bulldogs.  In 1920 he was elected president of the newly formed American Professional Football Association and played into his 40s.  He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963.  He also played professional baseball and was proficient at golf, bowling, lacrosse, hockey, swimming, rifle shooting, squash, handball, horsemanship and with the bow and arrow.  The log cabin in the rear was moved here to show the type of home he was born and raised in.  It is the oldest known homestead in Payne County, built in 1876 by Pawnee Rice and later occupied by the William Sherman Tecumseh Kerby family.

Almost everything in the house is original.  His first wife was a pack rat and donated most of the stuff and told them how everything was when they lived here, including wallpaper and curtains.  The dress in the corner was her wedding dress.  A beautiful lace table cloth that she made was on the dining room table.

Then we drove on to Pawnee to tour the Pawnee Bill Buffalo Ranch.  Gordon William "Pawnee Bill" Lillie was a renowned Wild West Show entertainer.   His wife May was a trick rider in his show.  Annie Oakley worked for his show for a time, also.  In the early 1880s he had jobs hauling corn to big cattle ranches and assisted with cattle roundups and even assisted in the chase and apprehension of cattle rustlers and got a bullet wound in his neck.  He came to Indian Territory in 1875 as a teacher and interpreter for the Pawnee Indians.  He started as an interpreter and performer for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1885 and formed his own show in 1888.

They traveled the U.S.and Europe going to the World's Fair in Antwerp, Belgium and ended their tour in France.  They traveled with about 300 people plus animals.  He bought the land overlooking the town of Pawnee in 1903 from a friend who was a medicine man named Blue Hawk.  Blue Hawk Peak is the highest peak in the county with beautiful views in all directions from the ranch house.  The 2,000 acre showplace ranch also served as a location for productions of Pawnee Bill's Feature Film Company with such films as May Lillie: Queen of the Buffalo Ranch; Pawnee Bill, the White Chief; and Pawnee Bill, the Frontier Detective.

This fourteen room mansion is fully furnished with their original possessions.  It costs $5.00 to tour the home, but it is free to go through the museum and all the outbuildings.  The mansion and carriage house are built of native stone from the ranch.

The five-hundred acre grounds include a barn, blacksmith shop, log cabin, managers house (originally a carriage house with bunkhouse upstairs for the hired hands) and museum and gift shop.   The three story barn, built in 1926, housed his prized Scottish Shorthorn cattle on the main floor, horses in the basement and the loft held 100 tons of hay. It now has a variety of old wagons and farm equipment on display.  Also, one wall displays a billboard from 1900 that was painted on the side of a building by Frederic Remington.  It was uncovered in 1982 by some volunteer firemen while they were tearing down an old drugstore to make room for a new fire station.  It was painted on the wood siding and was covered with plaster and lathe.  It is 65 feet long by 10 feet high and depicts many of the acts of the wild west show, like Indians raiding a stage, buffalo hunts, trick riding, sharp shooting and a U.S. Cavalry charge.  They even reenacted the Great Train Robbery by the Dalton Gang in some shows.  In 1908, for financial reasons, he merged his show with Buffalo Bill's show.  They called it Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Pawnee Bill's Great Far East Show (with dancing girls from India and Hindu magicians).  It was better known as The Two Bill's Show.  They closed the show in 1913 as times and interests were changing and box office receipts were dwindling.

You can drive the paved path through the buffalo pasture where there are also longhorn cattle and draft horses.  He did some buffalo hunting when he was younger, but came to realize they needed to be protected before they were wiped out.  Raising bison was his primary interest on the ranch.  At one time he had the largest herd in the world here. 

The museum is in the background.

They do a reenactment of Pawnee Bill's Original Wild West Show on Father's Day weekend.

Friday we drove over to Claremore to see the Will Rogers Museum near Rogers Boulevard across the street from Rogers State University just down the road from Rogers Hotel and a diner with Will Rogers Fried Pie.  Hometown boy, you get the idea.  

He is buried just out front of the museum along with his wife and most of his children.

The first room you enter in the museum has about a dozen of his saddles on display from places that he visited all over the world, including several from South American countries, Africa, France, the Navajo Nation and this one from Mongolia.

Coming Through the Rye by Frederic Remington

There are many, many portraits and sculptures of him throughout the museum.  He originally became famous doing roping tricks.  He was taught how to use a lasso by a freed slave on the family ranch.  He left home as a teenager and went to Argentina and then to South Africa in 1902 where he got a job as Cherokee Kid, the trick roper, with Texas Jack's Wild West Circus.  His skill won him jobs in wild west shows and then on Vaudeville stages where he started telling small jokes.  The jokes were apologies for when his rope failed.  Soon the jokes were better than the ropes.  They called him "The Poet Lariat".  He is in the Guiness Book of World Records for throwing three lassos at once.  One caught the running horse's neck, the second would hoop around the rider and the third swooped up under the horse to loop all four legs.  His lariat feats are recorded in his movie The Ropin' Fool.  He could even throw a rope with his foot and catch a horse.

He loved his time at home best, but he traveled the world as a journalist, humorist and diplomat.  He was friends with senators, 7 presidents and kings.  He was a star of Broadway, 71 movies in the 20s and 30s(silent and talkies), the Ziegfeld Follies, was a popular broadcaster, wrote more than 4,000 syndicated columns for 600 newspapers and wrote 7 books.  He was a top paid star in Hollywood and his name was always listed above the title of the movie.  He traveled around the world three times meting people, covering wars and talking about peace. 

The museum is built on land where Will and his family had planned to build a home.  It's on a hill overlooking Claremore .  Will was killed in a plane crash near Barrow, Alaska with his famous pilot, Wiley Post.  A few of his famous quotes:   I hold only two distinctions in the movie business, ugliest fellow in 'em and I still have the same wife I started out with.  I don't tell jokes.  I just watch the government and report the facts.  With Congress, every time they make a joke, it's a law.  Every time they make a law, it's a joke.  I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like.  A man only learns by two things, one is reading and the other is association with smart people.  That's why I read and hang out with my smart hubby!

We drove 12 miles northwest to Oologah to tour Will Rogers birthplace and childhood home.  Will's father, Clem, homesteaded this place and in 1879 he owned 10,000 head of cattle on this 60,000 acre ranch.  At that time there were 50 million people in the country and this was in the Cherokee Nation within Indian Territory.  It is now a living history ranch with a free self-guided tour.  Very nice. 

The house was actually moved about 3/4 of a mile up to this hill, as it would have been under water when they put in the dam that formed Oologah Lake.  They have lots of special activities out here like Will's Country Christmas with hayrides, lantern tours, ornament making, carolers, brass trio and vendors.  They also have Frontier Days Kids Camps in June and July and Will Rogers Days in November.  He was born here at the Dog Iron Ranch in 1879, but he didn't want to stay and run it.  He did buy it back later in life and hired his niece and nephew as caretakers.

This is the sitting room.  The home was built of hand-hewn logs and later sided with clapboard and painted white.  It became known as The White House on the Verdigris because it was a regional place for government, parties, weddings and funerals.  Will's father, Clem, was among the 25 members of the governing Cherokee National Council.  He conducted governmental hearings and other business in this historic home in the 1870s and 1880s.  Rogers County was named in honor of his father.  He was elected eldest delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention in 1907.  He fought with the Cherokee Confederate Cavalry in the Civil War.  He was a Captain and a scout.  His division was the last to surrender to the Union.  Will was named in honor of Assistant Indian Chief William Penn Adair.

There are goats roaming about free and a sign in the barn that says "Beware Guard Donkey".

I love goats.  They are so fun to watch.

They also had a couple of horses and a few longhorns.

Back in Claremore, it was Dickens on the Boulevard weekend with real live Dicken's era people in shop windows, as store clerks and walking all about downtown.  They were roasting chestnuts on the corner and there were other food vendors.  A couple guys had set up a temporary blacksmith shop in the street with fires going and branding irons at the ready.  Not sure what that was about.  They were giving historic rooftop tours across the roofs of the downtown businesses, Tales From the Top.  I think there were about ten antique shops in the three block area plus little boutique shops, candy shop, quaint little diners, etc.

Carriage rides.

A six-gun salute for the flag and Johnnie Cash's song Ragged Old Flag.   That's what you get with a Dicken's Christmas in Claremore, Oklahoma!  Claremore is also home to Lynn Riggs who wrote the play Green Grow the Lilacs, that was adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein into the wonderful musical Oklahoma.  It's also home to Patti Page.  We are on the road again Sunday to Oklahoma City and then Texas on Wednesday for Thanksgiving.



Wild Turkey by John James Audubon (1985-1851).

Happy Turkey Day,
Tarra

Quote of the day
  "For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.  We all breath the same air.  We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
  President John F. Kennedy June 10, 1963

Topeka and Kansas City

Tuesday, Nov. 10th - Saturday, Nov. 14th

We arrived in Topeka on Tuesday afternoon and set up camp at the Shawnee Lake Campground in the southeast part of the city.  It's a beautiful and huge park with a golf course, softball complex, several marinas and swimming beaches and a nice, wide concrete bike path all the way around the lake.

There are two of these bike stations, one on either side of the lake, and 10 stations throughout the city with 100 bikes available 24/7.   You can go to Social Bicycles mobile app to reserve one.

Wednesday we went to the Brown v. Board of Education Museum in the old Monroe Elementary School.  The school opened in 1927 and closed in 1975.  Parents of six students who attended this school in 1949 participated in the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit.  In 1954 the Supreme Court decided separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.  African-American families began settling this neighborhood after the Civil War, on property owned by a white abolitionist couple who were active in the Underground Railroad.  The kindergarten in this neighborhood in 1900 had a band with drums, triangles, saxophones and coronets.  Girls sewed their own aprons.  A German educator started the first kindergarten in 1837.  My grade school didn't even have a kindergarten by 1971 when I graduated high school.

After touring the museum on Wednesday afternoon, we drove out to the Kansas Museum of History and walked the 2.5 mile trail through the prairie grasslands and woodlands.  Interesting tree and root system completely hollowed out by the creek.

Swinging bridge over Wea Creek on the trail.

On Thursday we drove over to Kansas City to tour the Liberty Memorial, the first and largest WWI memorial in the country.  There were 36 countries involved in WWI.  By 1917 there were 35,000 miles of trenches crisscrossing the Western Front.  The U.S. declared war against Germany on April 1, 1917.

Just two weeks after the Armistice Kansas City citizens discussed building a monument and quickly raised $2.5 million.  The two Sphinxes on either side of the tower on the Liberty Memorial Deck are Memory (facing east with wings shielding its face from the horrors of the European battlefields and Future ( facing west with wings shrouding its face to symbolize the future which is yet unseen).  There are four carved Guardian Spirits around the tower top, Honor to the northeast, Courage to the southeast, Patriotism to the southwest and Sacrifice to the northwest.  We didn't stay for evening, but there is supposed to be a flame effect created by steam and colored lights.

The Allied Military leaders gathered to dedicate the site Nov. 1, 1921 with 100,000 people witnessing the historic event.  It was the only time the five commanders were together.  The Memorial opened on Nov. 11, 1926, exactly 8 years after the end of the war.  President Coolidge gave the dedication speech. 

The Tower is 217 feet tall and we took the elevator up to the observation deck.  The museum is below the tower and there is an east Memory Hall and west Exhibit Hall on this deck with special exhibits.

This is a view down to the entrance on the south side.

This is a view of Kansas City to the north.

This is the Glass Bridge inside the entrance with the Tower above reflected in it.  If you look closely, especially along the bottom of the picture, you can see the field of 9,000 poppies below the glass, each representing 1,000 combatant deaths during WWI.  The most famous poem from WWI was written in 1915 by John McCrae.  In Flanders fields the poppies blow - Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place: and in the sky - The larks, still bravely singing, fly - Scarce heard among the guns below.     We are the Dead.  Short days ago - We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, - Loved, and were loved, and now we lie - In Flanders fields.     Take up the quarrel with the foe: - To you from failing hands we throw - The torch; be yours to hold it high - If ye break the faith with us who die - We shall not sleep, though poppies grow - In Flanders fields.

1918 Ford Model T ambulance over 7 feet tall, 15 feet long and 5 feet wide.  It could hold three stretchers or four sitting wounded.

  This is a 1915 quilt made from tobacco souvenirs called flannels.  Flags of the world's countries, butterflies, athletes and Native American motifs were popular decorative pieces of cloth.  Coupons on tobacco products were sent in to redeem flannels.

Mural in west Exhibit Hall.  The Pantheon de la Guerre was a monumental work of art begun soon after the start of the war to show the heroic deeds of the Allies.  There were contributions from dozens of French artists.  It was 400 feet long and 40 feet wide and was exhibited in Paris in 1918.  There are thousands of portraits of war participants on it.  It traveled to the U.S. in 1933 for the Chicago Exposition.  It was supposed to be returned to Paris, but was forgotten laying outside a warehouse in Baltimore, Maryland for over 20 years.  A local restaurant owner eventually bought it for scrap and donated it to the Liberty Memorial. The ruined exterior and edges were trimmed off and it was converted to fit the museum building.  The center French section is here in Exhibit Hall and the large section with the Allies is across the deck in Memory Hall.  We ate at Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbeque just a short way north of the Memorial.  It was very good.  It started as a family business in 1957 and now the grandson has five other restaurants in Kansas City and they cater all over the nation for groups of 10 to 10,000.  They also have a nationwide shipping division. 

Friday we visited the Capitol of the Sunflower State.

In this photo you can see the beginning of the 296 stairs that take you on the Dome Tour.  All the fancy arches and rails that look like wood are actually copper, very beautiful and shiny.  The 900 pound chandelier is a replica of the original which was donated in 1942 for the WWII scrap metal drive.



This shows the five floors below the dome with a Christmas Tree in the center circle on the first floor.  There is also a huge basement floor with Visitor Center, Gift Shop and many photos of the construction of the building and the early history of the state.

Once you get above the fancy glass dome, it's another 75 feet to the top with a very scary, spiral staircase at the top before you go outside to get a unique bird's eye view of Topeka.

This is toward the northwest with a row of grain elevator silos on the far horizon that was the largest grain storage complex in the world when it was built.

This is looking south with a view of the State House.

Our tour guide starting back down.  She told us that all of this used to be open to the public without a guide and kids climbed up here as they pleased, slid down the walls and wrote their names any place they could mange to reach.  Notice the beam that goes out from the stairs over to the dome wall.

Here is a close-up.  Someone managed to crawl out on that beam and write his name on it.  You can only get up there on a guided tour these days, but it is the only Capitol where you can go outside at the top.

Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison in 1897.  In 1932 she was the first woman to fly an airplane solo across the Atlantic.  Five years later she disappeared attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world at the equator.

John Steuart Curry painting Tragic Prelude featuring abolitionist John Brown.

The copper columns and railings in the Senate chambers are highly polished and just shine.

House of representatives.  It is hard to believe, but at one time everything in the Capitol building was painted over and covered up with a solid off white color.  They painted over the paintings, the stenciling, the carved woodwork, the marble columns and the names of the historical figures above the windows.  All the copper columns and railings and trim were turned completely black and looked like walnut wood.  The reason was because the gas lighting, cigar and cigarette smoke and open windows (because there was no air conditioning) made everything so dirty, it had to be painted often to keep it looking good.  When the building was restored, they cleaned off layers and layers of paint and found the original paintings and stuff that no one even remembered was under there.  It took several years to get all the copper cleaned and polished.

The two-story State Library is open to any Kansas citizen over 18.

Governor's ceremonial office with a bison hide draped over the desk which was built by the students from the School for the Deaf in Olathe in the 1930s.  There is also a small framed picture hanging on the wall of the log home where the song Home on the Range was written by Dr. Brewster M. Higley.  He originally published it as a poem called My Western Home in 1873.  His friend, Daniel E. Kelley, wrote the music,  It became the state song of Kansas in 1947. 

The Capitol was started in 1866 and completed in 1903 at a cost of $3.2 million.  It is 17 feet taller than the U.S. Capitol and has a statue of a Kansa warrior on top.  Kansa men plucked their eyebrows, chins, arms and head leaving only a narrow strip of hair on the top of their heads.  Ouch!  In 1821 a chief of the Kansas traveled to Washington, D.C. with other chiefs to meet with President Monroe.  His great-great-grandson, Charles Curtis, became Herbert Hoover's vice president.  There's a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the foreground.  It will probably be the last one we see of him as we head further south.

War Memorial at Great Overland Station.  Opened in 1927, it is a museum today.  Kansas Medal of Honor recipients names are on the bricks surrounding the base of the memorial.

There are 50 American flags each with a state flag below it and a plaque like this for each of the states.  It was so calm that it was hard to tell there were two flags on each pole.

When we got back to camp we rode the 7 mile bike trail around the lake.

On Saturday we did the Kansas Museum of History.

An Unusual Honor:  Just an interesting little bit of trivia I came across in the museum.  Children of Civil War veterans still walk among us 150 years after the end of the war.  I guess it was common practice for young brides to marry very old veterans in the early 1900s, as they could collect their husbands pensions when they died.  Colonel John Dinsmore USAF, of Lucas, Kansas died in 2013 at the age of 85.  He was the son of Pvt. Samuel Dinsmore of Company B 116th Ohio Infantry in the Civil War.  He was a 64 year old retired teacher when he married 20 year old Emilie Brozek.  They had two children, John and Emily.   After his retirement he built what is called one of the eight wonders of Kansas for his family.  Check it out at www.garden-of-eden-lucas-kansas.com.  It's very interesting and unusual.  

Flyer for the 1946 musical The Harvey Girls.  The Harvey Houses were the nation's first chain restaurant.  Fred Harvey opened the first one in the Topeka depot in 1876.  Travelers on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe were delighted.  He quickly expanded with 45 Harvey Houses and 20 dining cars across 12 states.  Kansas had 8,797 miles of railroad track by 1890.  Only the tiniest towns had no rail service.  Only one other state had more track by 1900.

I thought this was a pretty cool rocking chair made out of cowhide and horns.  They had an 1880 butter churn/treadmill run by the family dog.  I wonder how Gunner or Digger would feel about that.  Really, it's only right that every member of the family pitches in and does his or her share of the chores.  Right?

In the early 1900s hamburgers were not yet American's favorite food.  Walter Anderson of Witchita was one of the first fry cooks to make them more appealing.  He flattened them into flat patties seared on both sides and they became so popular he opened several hamburger stands.  In 1921 he and a partner opened the first White Castle "Eating House" in Witchita serving small square hamburgers.  Their slogan "Buy them by the Sack" sounds just like Nick's Hamburger shop in Brookings, SD.  

Valentine, Inc. of Witchita began making all steel portable diners in 1938.  A single operator could run the completely furnished diner and pay Valentine from the daily reciepts.  The diners were sold throughout the U.S.  Drive-In restaurants with carhops became especially popular in the 1950s like the Bobo Drive-In that has been operating in downtown Topeka since 1953.  Pizza became popular in the 1950s and Pizza Hut, now the largest pizza chain in the world, started in Witchita in 1958.  Mexican food became widely popular in the 1960s.  Taco Grande began in Witchita in 1960 and Taco Tico in 1961.  Taco Casa started in 1963 in Topeka.

This quilt is a textile diary.  It was made in 1877 by an 80 year old lady who had outlived 15 of her 18 siblings and 9 of her 12 children.  Two of her sons fought in the Civil War.  She wanted to record her family's history, so on every other quilt block she embroidered their names, birth and death dates and sometimes place and/or cause of death.

At our campground at Lake Shawnee they have the lights set up for a Christmas Winter Wonderland tour.  As luck would have it, they turned on the lights just to test them the first night we were here.  This was our view straight out the front of our camper.

This was right out our back window.

This one was right out the door.  Lucky for us we went for a walk and took some pictures, as this was the only night they were on while we were her.

They covered all the bases with the Nativity Scene,

The Twelve Days of Christmas,

Happy Kwanzaa and Happy Hannakah,

Santa and his reindeer, Santa in a hot air balloon,

Santa and his elves, A Christmas train and depot, presents, trees, bells, stars, snowflakes, ornaments,

and just about any thing you can think of that has to do with the holiday season.

Even the entrance and exit were all decked out.

We leave for Tulsa on Sunday.

Tarra