Westward Ho

Saturday morning after a great breakfast with Pastor James and Trish Bell, her Mother Charlotte Huskey and Keith’s cousin Joseph, wife Andrea and family Gellenbeck, We began our trek West! Wagon’s Ho! In the spirit of the covered wagon families we only made it about 100 miles, to the Tinker Air Force Base FamCamp in OKC where we would spend 3 days. Lovely days, no rain (which really seems to follow us around!), mild temperatures, one day even 75!

Keith did quite a bit of growing up in Oklahoma City, from his mid-childhood years to his mid -teenage years. His Mother’s family were Guthrie, Oklahoma folks, and his Grandparents, Mother, Uncles and a dear, young cousin are buried in Guthrie which is about an hour north of here. But his living relatives, his wonderful Uncle Loren and Aunt Maxine live in Edmond, a pretty city between OKC and Guthrie. That was our real reason for the stop here. We spent Saturday evening at their home, visiting, studying their family history (2 genealogists, oh my!), eating and listening to Loren and Keith play guitars and sing. Sunday we attended church where Maxine is the pastor/preacher. She is an amazing speaker of God’s word and a lovely person. After their afternoon service we met for dinner in a part of Oklahoma City known as, “Stockyard City”. You drive through the welded metal archway that says you have arrived. It is old, western and comfortable. Not modern, high rise like OKC! There are still stockyards and cattle sales in Stockyard City. We ate a wonderful meal of beef (Oklahoma grown, no doubt) in the Hereford Room of Cattleman’s Steakhouse. A picture of the mural in that dining room follows. There was also a Black Angus room, but the Hereford room was the less crowded area.

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Monday, our last day with the Busbees was spent driving up to Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie to visit the family graves.

We picked up some ice cream at Brahm’s (a southern oasis) and went back to Edmond for a homemade chicken pot pie, more genealogy and a nice afternoon. Maxine and Loren came down to our place that evening to watch some old family movies Keith has on DVD, movies of Loren and Keith’s mom as children, then Keith and his brother John as youngsters. We ate the ice cream, more music and then said our goodbyes.

I’ve mentioned that we visited Keith’s childhood friend Harley in Broken Bow a couple of times. Well they were neighbors in OKC. We drove by that old neighborhood and snapped a photo of Keith in his front yard to facebook to him! That was fun!

Tuesday would see us packing up and heading south.

This leg of our journey would take us south again through Dallas. We didn’t stop to see the “leaning tower of Dallas” that was headlining the news the last few days. We wanted to get through there safely before rush hour! Our ultimate destination was that of Corsicana Texas, the place we were headed back in November when we got the word that Janet was ill. We are here visiting old Navy friends, Jim and Karen Pelzel. Keith retired from the Navy in 97 and Jim not long after that. We could have said that we hadn’t seen them for 25 years, but the coolest thing happened a couple of years ago. We got a facebook message from Jim that he understood we were living in Montana and wondered how far from Trout Creek we were, as that was where Karen’s parents lived! So over the last 2 or three years we have seen them each summer either at our place in Hot Springs, or at her parents’ in Trout Creek.

ARGENTINIAN ANTS! Oh my, We were going to stay at Navarro Mills Lake at Liberty Hill Park (Army Corps of Engineers) until we found out that they have been invaded, as have several other places in eastern Texas by these invasive buggers. We were required to come with a pesticide that we would encircle Coach and Toad with to keep the ants out, which they would eat and return to the nest with and kill the queen. Not our cup of tea and we didn’t want to expose Goob and Kona to such nonsense! So we are staying in an RV park in Corsicana. We joined Jim, Karen and one of their daughters Brenna for Karen’s birthday dinner last night. The plan was to go over this morning and Jim would take us out and show us around, however, a major thunder storm and heavy rain moved through this morning so we hunkered down! After that passed Joanette, trying to avoid muddy places rammed her head on the bottom corner of one of the slide outs and spent the next hour with a bag of frozen veggies on her goose egg! Pleased to report that I am fine, the “golf ball” has diminished into something more like a half an orange! We did some touring this afternoon, the Stover Chocolate Factory and the Collin Street Bakery (very well known for their holiday fruitcakes)

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Tomorrow, Thursday, March 5, our last day in Corsicana and Karen’s first day of spring break. We’re planning lunch and darts at a local bar, some more touristing and then on Friday we are going back to Waco for a few days!