London in Oklahoma, Part 1: Casa Wedel

We just got back from a 10-day vacation to Oklahoma. London's Mimi and Papa (Vicki's parents) live in Oklahoma City, and London's Grandma and Grandpa (my folks) live in the country about 20 miles outside of Enid. This time we remembered the cameras and we got a lot of pix, so I'm splitting them up. This post is just stuff from the first half of the trip. Pix from Mimi and Papa's will go up later (hopefully not too much later...).

It is usually no more expensive to stay at a part-sleep-fly hotel than it is to park the car for however long we're going to be gone anyway, so we often stay overnight before we fly. Here's London in the hotel in Fresno the night before we left. We got a Thomas the Tank Engine sticker kit a few months ago, and it came in a little plastic case with a latch and a handle. We call it London's suitcase, and it's just the right size to hold six pieces of track and about 10 vehicles. He can set it up anywhere we go, and we can tear it down and pack it up in about two minutes flat. Very handy.


London helps Grandpa and Grandma fill up a little pool. Mom and Dad live on an acre out in the country, surrounded by wheat fields and pasture. We moved out there when I was about nine years old. The main house is a two-story farmhouse that was built around 1900, but irritatingly I didn't get any good pictures of it. The trailer in the background belonged to my grandparents, who moved from Nebraska to stay with us when I was in my early teens. Both of them have passed on, but it was really great to have them close while we did. Off to the right is the carport that Dad built to protect the Wedel fleet. There are also three sheds on the property, and about 30 big trees (elms and cottonwoods).

It was just about the perfect place to grow up. The buildings and trees give plenty of places to hide and allow for some good strategy when you're trying to sneak up on your brothers. It's far away from everything--the nearest neighbors are about half a mile away to the west, and the second nearest are a mile away to the east. So you could go outside and raise hell without worrying about bothering anyone, which is very handy when you're a teenager. And the place is crazy with wildlife--lizards, turtles, snakes, rabbits, raccoons, opossums, armadillos, coyotes, deer, the occasional bat, and even bobcats and mountain lions. A couple of years ago Mom was coming home from a walk and a mountain lion padded across the road just a few dozen yards in front of her. Then it sat in the ditch at watched her for a while before it slinked away. Mom said it was the most scared she'd ever been.

On this visit I was taking out some table scraps when a bobcat chased a cottontail out of the field behind the house. They ran across the backyard, around the trailer, and back into the field. I saw the whole thing from the fence--they passed within 20 feet of me on both passes. Pretty cool.


The other awesome thing about the ancestral manse is that there is a creek about a quarter of a mile away, and the farmers who own the pasture it flows through have always been pretty relaxed about us getting in there and exploring as long as we steer clear of their cows. No, I've never been cow-tipping. I was always way more interested in catching turtles and picking up bones. We often go down to the creek on walks and throw rocks in the water. Here London is getting in on the action.


From the age of five on we always had pet turtles, but that's a story for another day. I really wanted to catch a turtle to show London, and chelonian fate smiled on us last Friday. I was coming back from Enid with my brothers after catching a movie and we found two box turtles crossing the road. Both Western box turtles, Terrapene ornata ornata, both female, both full grown and apparently healthy. One of them had a small chunk out of the back end of its shell (an old wound and completely healed), but it's not uncommon to find turtles that have survived much more serious injuries, like broken shells or missing limbs. They are incredibly tough animals. I love 'em. Anyway, we laid an old tire on its side to make a temporary pen, filled up the inside with water to give the turtles a cool, shady place to rest, and fed them some watermelon rinds. We only kept them for a couple of days, and turned them loose right where we caught them. London thought they were pretty cool, and the turtles certainly seemed to be happy--the melon rinds were pretty well chewed by the time I tossed them.


Todd, Becca, and Anna Ruth joined us Thursday evening. Anna Ruth is growing so fast. Except for one day this spring when we were passing through on our way home from a job interview, we hadn't seen her since Christmas.


She was a little nervous around me, but on Saturday she finally settled down and let me hold her for a few minutes. Yeah, I get it, I'm scary-looking, har-dee-har.


Ryan also came up Thursday evening, and on Friday he was joined by his fiancee, Courtney Hearst. They just got engaged a couple of weeks ago. London loves them both, of course, but he doesn't always love the camera.


It's best if he doesn't even know he's on camera.


Here are Todd and Becca with the little ones. Neither of the babies looks too happy here, but that's just bad timing. They were both smiling and laughing most of the time.


On Saturday evening Ryan and Courtney drove us down to Hennessey to meet Vicki's dad. There is a Sinclair station there with a rockin' sauropod out front, so of course we had a photo op.


We had a wonderful time. I just wish it could have lasted longer. I find that the longer we are away, the more I miss Oklahoma. Naturally we are hoping for the best here in Merced, but I hope someday our path can take us closer to what I will always think of as home.