Our Texas Thanksgiving – Part 3 – The OK Corral And Into Texas

Pratt, KS is only about 40 minutes from the Oklahoma border, and we needed to go through OK to get to Texas. Most of our day was a driving day. Without stops the drive is a 6 1/2 hour drive and is 438 miles or 686 km. But we made a couple of stops along the way, since OK was a new state for us (we have been to most of the 50 states, and are down to only single digits of states we have not yet seen).

The Kansas/Oklahoma border.

Of course we had to make a few necessity stops, but we took advantage of those too, and made them fun. We have started a fun trend of taking selfies of the day to share with everyone while traveling. One of the pit stops had a dog park that was all ready for Christmas. And everyone knows we are big dog lovers.

These pictures were taken from the car, while driving.

We had definitely entered The Bible Belt region of the country.

We also made a fun and necessary stop at the OK City Visitor’s Center. While there we asked about things to see and do on our way.

One of the suggestions was to go visit the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. OK is a large part of cowboy country, as was the whole area we visited, so off we went. The museum did a good job of covering all aspects of life in the western and cowboy states. I highly recommend it. It mostly featured the way of life for cowboys, but it also covered everything about living in the high plains and the west, and the western movie classics, and the rodeo way of life. They did a good job of featuring the different Native American cultures of the areas too.

This is the giant sculpture that you see when you first enter the museum.

Then there were big statues of Charleton Heston and John Wayne,

Ronald Reagan,

and, of course, Abraham Lincoln.

We toured the outside gardens first.

Larry was trying his skills as a roper. It’s a good thing we don’t have to rely on those skills. 🙂

The outside gardens had replicas of different Native American homes and lifestyles.

Life was difficult for everyone, cowboy, settler or “Indian” in those days.

People moving west would pack up all their earthly possessions, food, and their family into these covered wagons to make their long, arduous trek westward.

Long live the cowboys!

After touring the outside gardens, we ventured inside once again. Once of the large displays was a replica of any western town throughout the nation, complete with one-room schools, churches, hotels, and jail cells.

Larry was practicing his sermon

while I landed in jail.

We saw A LOT of cattle along the way, all throughout this trip, and we saw a lot of Texas longhorns too.

If you are interested in how the west was won, I highly recommend visiting the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, OK. It was very informative and very well presented. It’s a good family excursion for locals and tourists alike.