October 10, 2015

In honor of autumn, I decided to change the color of my type today.  I hope you will find it a pleasant switch for this post.  There is much to share since I wrote last.  Our night in the Wal-Mart in North Little Rock was a little scary for a while.  All was well until about 9:30 pm, when a large group of men parked a truck right behind us, and were drinking beers and making a lot of noise.  We were afraid they could be part of a gang, but then an hour later two big rig trucks pulled in to spend the night and the group of beer drinkers left.  Thank God.  We felt much safer with the truckers, as I think they would have come to our rescue if we had needed help.  We have noticed some interesting named places along our way. 

Here is one such example.  We didn't visit this park, so we have no idea why the name, but it amused me.


  The next day we went to the Elks Lodge near Fort Smith, AR.  That night they were having a big fund raiser dinner......a FISH FRY.  Those of you who know I am seriously allergic to ALL seafood can understand why we had to pass on



that....but we did go in after dinner since they had a band for dancing.  It turned out to be a VERY loud rock and roll band, so we didn't stay too long, but we did get to do a few line dances and one nice and slow "belly rubber."  This last picture was behind the bar.......not sure of its meaning either.
We left the lodge on Monday
and saw this on the side
of a building in Fort Smith.




 We drove west on I-40 to a KOA Park near Choctaw, OK, where we only stayed one night.  As we continued the next day, we stopped at the Cherokee Trading Post, where we saw some beautiful hand made Native American items.  The artwork was amazing, as you can see below.

We continued west and stopped at a campground in Texola, OK. 

We stayed two nights so we could visit the little town of Shamrock, TX which was 16 miles west of where we were.  I took over 300 pictures inside and outside the structures of the Pioneer West Museum, so I will only post a few.  If anyone wants to see more pictures from the Cherokee Trading Post or from the museum, please post a request, and I will forward more pictures to you.  Below is the museum, and an old piano in the sitting room.  Since I posted this, I was kindly informed that it is probably a pump organ, so I say thank you Allyn, and I really do appreciate corrections.  This was an old hotel before it became a museum.  I know I shouldn't have taken the picture of Jim in the shamrock hat, but he looked so natural I couldn't resist it. 

 

The picture above is a pioneer kitchen and the one below was the upstairs sitting room. 

Then we went outside for a docent guided tour.  We visited an old law office, and old fire truck and one of the old street lights in town.

 After that, we went to see the Shamrock water tower plaza.

This mural above covered the whole side of a huge brick building. 



We got a kick out of the volunteer fire department too. 





Last but not least, we saw the Conoco Tower, an old gas station in town.  I will close for now, but later today or tomorrow, I will finish reporting on our travels up through today.  Stay well, stay happy and enjoy America, it's God's gift to us.