Beautiful Places to be Seen

Lake Hefner, Oklahoma City, OK

I have now transitioned from the southwest to the midwest and the landscape makes that obvious. But first, I'll finish telling Oklahoma stories.

Wednesday evening I got to go be all photographer-like with Todd at Lake Hefner in OK City. There was an exciting-looking storm on its way in and Todd being the great photographer that he is decided we should go out to the lake to photograph the stormy clouds and one really great sunset. I think sometimes I'm kind of lazy at seizing good photographic opportunities, so I was very glad that we went. I have also been lazy in trying out the capabilities of my awesome camera which, although not huge and impressive with large lenses, is quite good and has manual options I've never even tried. Sigh. I really need to work on that. In any case, using some basic auto photographic skills (involving not a whole lot of skill) I did capture some pretty cool clouds and a truly beautiful sunset over the lake. I like to tell myself that half the battle in photography is recognizing a good picture, not just the actual taking of the picture so at least I did that and fortunately my camera is quite good even using its auto setting. I was very impressed with the Oklahoma landscape I was introduced to at the lake. Overall Oklahoma has greatly exceeded my expectations. The people are great, the landscape is (sometimes) very pretty, and as long as you've got cool people to hang out with it's not boring!

Thursday I made the mistake of taking allergy medicine that rendered me completely useless which I feel bad about, because I was staying with my friend Amber and her family and sadly I fear I must have come across as the most boring guest ever. They were so unbelievably nice though and it was great to see Amber. The day consisted of a CSI marathon, a middle school band concert, and some really delicious pizza. A pretty good day overall, even if I was a little out of it. So the end of my time in Oklahoma came Friday morning as I filled my trusty Baxter with gas (which is slightly cheaper in OK) and headed off for Missouri. I had my first toll road experience which was not a very happy first experience to be had. It cost me $8 to leave Oklahoma, perhaps a strategy to keep people in? And there's just more toll roads to come unless I decide to be cheap and take the longer way...then again, that would take more gas so really there's no cheap way to do it. Hmm. Oh well, anyways...

I spent the day in St. Louis, I wandered around down town, saw the arch, stuck my feet in the Mississippi River, and stood in Missouri while making funny faces at Illinois :-) It was a good day! Allergies are slightly ridiculous, which seems to have started as soon as I reached states with actual foliage and nature to cause allergies.

Tomorrow I head to Milwaukee to visit the fabulously awesome Erin and I can't wait!

Oh, and by the way, I seem to have a new addiction since I've started this journey: Sonic. We don't have Sonic in Boulder so I never discovered just how amazing it is but man those cream slushes and tater tots and sonic blasts and chicken sandwiches...aaaah they're so good! I drove several miles out of my way to find a Sonic today. That can't be a good sign.

Also, Happy Birthday to my mom, and happy graduation day to my cousin Irene!! :-)

Todd at Lake Hefner

Gateway Arch