Into Oklahoma

Thursday I drove north out of Texas into Oklahoma. To avoid getting on the turnpike, I took minor highways and found myself in the town of Duncan. There I visited the Chisholm Trail museum, commemorating the huge cattle drives of the late 19C. A docent showed me around and told me a long anecdote about an early automobile they had on display, so when I saw an exhibit on determining a cow’s age by looking at its horns, I was tempted to tell her Buddy Hackett’s joke about cow horns, but I refrained.

Lunch in a round steakhouse that also had catfish, then onward. Mid afternoon got me to Anadarko, an old Indian agency town that had two tribal museums. My tour books hadn’t mentioned the one run by the Wichita tribe, who were the native inhabitants before the feds started moving displaced eastern tribes in. It was an excellent museum, full of well presented materials on their customs and their sad history. The other museum belonged to what it insisted on calling the Delaware, one of those displaced eastern tribes, though that’s a European name. It had a lot less to say, including not saying how to pronounce the tribe’s name for itself, which is Lenape.

I had wanted to eat dinner in Anadarko before heading on to Mythcon in Weatherford, because there’s not a lot of places in Weatherford and I didn’t want to use them up. But it was still early enough that I had time to kill. So I thought of doing the deep countryside exploring in search of weird rock formations, next on my agenda, and then circling back to Anadarko.

There was also the question, where in Anadarko would I eat? It’s far tinier than Weatherford even. A Yelp search had brought up just two promising places, a Mexican restaurant and a bbq place, the latter with no Yelp reviews whatever. I’d be the first! Turned out it had no reviews because it didn’t exist. The building was long deserted and had a notice posted on the door from the city ordering the property owner to clean up the abundant weeds and trash. I posted an update to Yelp.

The Mexican place had a promising menu, but by the time I was finished in the countryside, I was in no mood to return to Anadarko and then head back out again. My maps didn’t show how to get on the back country roads to Weatherford, but I guessed, and guessed correctly, and I had my bbq ribs there.