Adler's Midwest Meandering Spring 2021

 Today is the first day that we went geo-caching and saw the sights in the region east of the Wichita Mountains.  We had searched it for a campground, but they didn't have the type of hook-ups that we required, so we decided on our present campground.  Staying closer to the mountains would have been nice, but it is a quick drive to get to that area.  We relied on geo-caching for getting us to the interesting spots today, and we found some caches that stated that we should take a machete along.  We scratched that one immediately.  Another stated that it was on a hiking trail, that appealed to us, but when we get to the G-zone, we could shed some blood from thorns.  We opted out of that one.  We will take you through our day of more successful caching, in pictures and commentary.  

This earthcache took us to the quaint little park, complete with a swimming pool in the town of Medicine Park.  This boulder came from the Wichita Mountains nearby, and it is a huge granite rock embedded in the ground.  We walked across that little white footbridge to arrive at the G-zone.

This is the 'swimming pool' that is adjacent to the first picture.  It is water from Lake Lawtonka, and is located below the dam, so I'm sure it was 'refreshing'.  There were some young people swimming while we were there.  Today was to be in the 80's but I don't think the water would be very warm.  

I am standing next to the wall that separates the homes from the street in this park area.  You can see the red granite rocks or cobblestones, that shape the construction of the wall.  These rocks are used extensively in this touristy little resort village, and used in every house and place of business that we saw.  Medicine Park was the first resort town in Oklahoma and the hey day era was in the 1920's and '30's.  It still draws a lot of people here.  

This is just one example of how this family used the red granite rock to build their house.  Our friend, Nick would be right at home here.  He has all of us looking for round stones for his rock collection.  It is not easy to find a near perfectly round rock.  I have found two for him and the last one was the size of a baseball. I might add that it is illegal to take any rocks from this area.  

We drove around the east side of Lawtonka Lake, and most of it was fairly old, but there was a section that was called, Lake Lawtonka Estates.  Wow!  There was every style and design of home there, and everyone home had at least two different kinds of stone on it, and some had three.  This was one of the big ones.  

This geo-cache took us to The Mt. Scott Kiowa United Methodist Church.  It was built in 1895 by the Queontones and Sahmaunts families and they constructed the church with native stone that was hauled from Mt. Scott, which is part of the Wichita Mountains.  It is often referred to as the mother church of the Kiowas.  The United Methodist Church was established in 1905.  

This is just one example of how the display of family was present on the gravesites.  If you pull this up close, on the upper left, you can see that the mother was an Indian bread maker.  This was totally all Native American burials here and it is the Mt. Scott Cemetery.  I did a late post on the 4th to show you what the Indian Bread that we get in New Mexico looks like.  Several people were asking what it was and I found an old picture of it, so I posted it.  It isn't the frybread, that most people think.  This is baked and frybread is deep-fried.  Tomorrow is another day.  We'll get into the Wichita Mountains tomorrow.