Home Town Boy Makes Good

October 9, 2023 – Day 11

Today was one of the first days that was really unplanned. We deliberately had slop in the schedule to deal with unexpected weather events. And remember a few entries ago we spoke of how we locked the next weeks down? Today was the first of those days. We had a choice to drive 400 miles to Amarillo, or drive roughly halfway and spend a night in Weathersford, OK. Looking at Google maps we noticed that the Stafford Air & Space Museum was located in Weathersford, OK. What’s curious about the decision of Weatherford, OK vs Amarillo, TX is that both have air and space museums! We only wanted to do one of them. When we realized that we could drive to Weatherford plus see the museum in one day that sealed the deal. If we arrived early enough and weren’t tired from the journey. Maybe we could do stuff in the afternoon after we set up!

A short driving day usually means no need to grind out the miles. RV driving is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get when you set out for the day. A few hundred miles can be a breeze or it can be an exhausting, white-knuckle adventure from bad road conditions, heavy traffic or wind. There was an option to drive around to the north of Oklahoma City that would add 30-45 minutes or we could drive a more direct route through Oklahoma City but the city traffic could add hours, aggravation and frazzled nerves. There’s no way to know until you’re too deep in it to get out. Driving around to the north seemed to be the more reasonable choice.

The road started off something like this. Not bad!

As you can see, it’s not the interstate but it isn’t a slow road. Speed limits were usually 65mph unless we were in a town. We prefer roads like this because you see a lot more on these than you do from an interstate.

First town up was Drumright OK and actually it was mostly the last town we drove through. Most of the rest of the day had us on the outskirts of all the remaining towns, missing the cool stuff. We missed the Historic District of Guthrie by one block, we were so tempted to turn around but we pressed on.

Drumright had some cool murals. And who names these towns, was there a Drumwrong next town over?

Next up was Cushing Ok, beginning in 1912 over the years they had 50 refineries. We didn’t see a single one. Paul is used to the Philadelphia refineries, covering hundreds of acres, belching flame into the sky. (You know, in retrospect, maybe they weren’t refineries, but they were something to do with oil. Philly doesn’t have oil but it has a big seaport.)

So of course the town has these really cool sculptures made of pipeline parts both entering and leaving town.

Next up was Perkins OK, famous for “Pistol Pete”. Susan said, “I know who that is!” Pistol Pete’s real name is Frank Eaton. Colonel John Joseph Coppinger, gave Frank a marksmanship badge and a new nickname, “Pistol Pete”. Like many of his tales, this may not be completely factual. He was born in Connecticut and eventually settled down in Perkins, OK and became sheriff. His Wikipedia page is worth a read. His statue is next to Dollar General.

We’ve seen so many Dollar General, Tractor Supply, and Harbor Freight stores that we can’t even count them. But today we learned something new! We were passed by a pickup truck with graphics that said “Tractor Supply: 24 Hour Delivery.” Neither of us knew they delivered much less deliver 24 hours a day. We guess that’s how you they roll out in the rural bits of the Heartland.

Next up was Cedar Valley. Paul can’t remember the town’s slogan but it was something like Golf Town. Golf Center, or Golf Supercalifragilistic. Mostly we can’t remember because we see so much it’s difficult to remember everything we see. You’ll have to trust us when we tell you that Cedar Valley’s whole reason for being is “Golf! Golf!! Golf!!! They had giant golf tees everywhere you looked. (Oh, good, there was a Wikipedia entry…)

Cedar Valley is a city in Logan County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 288 at the 2010 census, nearly five times the figure of 58 in 2000. … The main attraction is Cedar Valley Golf Club, which is by far the largest business in town.

Golf course developer Duffy Martin constructed the Cedar Valley Golf Club during 1973–4 in rural Logan County, near Cedar Creek, an unincorporated place with 61 residents in 1960. Several residences were also built on the property, and the new community had an estimated population of 33 by 1980. Residents voted to incorporate Cedar Valley in July 1982. Two additional golf courses opened in the early 1980s. Cimarron National Golf Club opened in August 1992 and Aqua Canyon opened in 1994. The town population was 61 in the 1990 census, 58 in 2000 and 288 in 2010

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Valley,_Oklahoma

Neither Susan nor Paul play golf. It is a game where the better you get the less you play? How is that fun?

Soon, we started to see oil wells. Were were seeing more and more plus signs of pipeline & storage facilities. Oklahoma is known for oil but it seems that the parts we’ve traveled through have fewer wells than Texas. There was a section in Texas where it was mile after mile of wells as far as you could see. Not so much for Oklahoma.

Then we caught up to this monstrosity. What was it? A big kid’s Big Wheel? It had 3 huge tires, sharp pointy things on the passing side and was driving about 15 mph down the center of a two lane 65 mph highway. Passing was possible since the road was dead flat and straight. You could see a long way off. But it made a turn and we were both glad that we didn’t have to pass.

Next up was Kingfisher, OK aka Nowuukoh’ Owuu’. Paul has tried googling that second name. He doesn’t know what tribal language it is. Our best guess is that it’s Cherokee since Jesse Chisolm was a Scotch-Cherokee fur trader. But it has this cool statue.

Chisolm was known for scouting what was later known as the Chisolm Trail. See the peace pipe in his hand in the statue? We can only wish that conflict between European and Native American relationships were solved that way. The exhibit back in St. Louis taught us otherwise.

We saw another cool roadside statue.

We’re pulling into Weatherford, maybe just half a mile from the Stafford Air and Space Museum, the road is very pretty, narrow, but pretty.

And then the construction started, we needed to turn right to go to the road the museum is on however that direction was closed to us. We couldn’t go straight either because that was also closed. Paul pulled over and took a look at the map, found a path to it and crossed our fingers that it was big rig friendly. Side note: it is perfectly ok to keep your cattle in your front yard.

We make our way around and again and just minutes away, and the road is closed! We could see the space museum but couldn’t get to it! We were forced to get on the highway drive past the museum and come back via surface roads. This is where you really have to trust that your RV GPS doesn’t drive you into tight squeaks. Finally, after a 30 minute detour we were there. Check out that cool metal sign on the right in the picture below. There were perhaps a dozen of these on the road into the museum, all different and all aviation or space themed.

The Stafford Air & Space Museum

Before we go into the museum, let’s pause to honor the contributions that the space program made during the Revolutionary War.

Outside were several fighter planes, Paul posed with the one nearest the door, the Lockheed, F-104C, “Starfighter.” True to form Susan bee-lined straight for shade.

The museum starts with an exhibit on the local boy who made good, Thomas P. Stafford. He was a distinguished test pilot, flew to the moon on Apollo 10, and was the commander on the Apollo Soyez joint mission. Remember that handshake in space? That’s him!

He has his own moon rock!

They had 2 of his slide rules there. Paul still has the one that his father used.

There was a lot more in the exhibit about Stafford, including a short film on his impressive career in NASA. Next you were in the museum proper. The first exhibits take a look at early aviation.

That’s not the actual Wright flyer, but a full-scale functional replica. The handout lets you know if the exhibit you’re viewing is an artifact or a replica.

The museum has piece of the Mission Control console from the Apollo era. In case you’re wondering, yes, Paul did flip some switches on it.

The Gemini capsule that Stafford flew.

The heat shielding shows the tremendous energies absorbed during the descent. Susan thinks it looks a bit like the moon.

The Saturn V booster had five F1 rockets made by Rocketdyne. In the area behind the engine was a wall of photos and data, a dizzying amount of data. Rocket nerds could spend hours in this one section. Neither Susan or Paul is a rock nerd therefore we didn’t spend hours there only a couple minutes. This is an actual “flight ready artifact.” A lot of what we saw was “flight ready.” NASA would built backups of items in case one was needed. These artifacts would later wind up in museums. Look up in this picture, they had five F1 sized engine photos above, letting you pretend you are under the Saturn V. They are very big!

Apollo 10 was the last of the Apollo missions to not land on the moon. The Lunar Excursion Module, LEM, did detach from the Command Module and descended to 50,000 feet above the moon, making all sorts of measurements for the Apollo 11 landing. The two craft were given the nicknames Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

This is a replica of what the cockpit of the LEM. It didn’t have seats, you stood while flying it.

Next up is an artifact, a segment of a Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster. You walked through to get to the next exhibit.

There was still a lot more museum to go through but we both were getting a bit overwhelmed by all the information. Paul learned that the International Space Station has had over 250 astronauts and has been orbiting the Earth for almost 25 years.

Paul in the cockpit of a F22 thinking about a possible second career.

It was a great museum, but we both realized that half a travel day with a museum visit was a lot to take on for one day. We’re still surprised about things we learn along the way. We try to run when we’re still really only capable of walking.

But wait, there’s more fun ahead! There were more closed streets between us and the RV park! For extra fun? The signage was poor at the park’s entrance and because of that Paul missed the turn. With nowhere to turn around nearby so we continued on that road and discovered a small industrial park that he was able to loop around and routes back to the RV park.

Now for the grownup part of the trip, we think our water pump is failing. The good news is that we have full hookups through to Phoenix so we won’t really need it. The bad news is the pump is probably failing and will need to be replaced before we head back to New Hampshire. Fortunately they’re not terribly expensive, so there’s that and we’ve ordered one to be delivered in Phoenix.

He used the Instant Pot, first time we’ve used it in the coach on this trip, to make Lemon Chicken and of course the pressure dingus failed. It never reached pressure, but it was still pretty good. (susan here: seems to fail only for him. Hmm.)

Daily: 183

Total: 1,815

Moving Miles/Day: 303

Overall Miles/Day: 165