Phillips Petroleum Company Museum, Bartlesville, OK

Bartlesville, OK, is all about Phillips Petroleum.  We visited the Phillips Petroleum Museum in downtown Bartlesville and found it very interesting:

 Oil turned out to be an amazing find in many, many ways as proved by Phillips Co. who received over 15,000 patents during their years!  Mike is standing in front of the "patent vault"

Osage Hills State Park, OK

Bartlesville, OK, is very fortunate to have some nice walking trails.  At the Riverside RV Park, where were are currently staying, you can hop on the trail and walk or ride bikes in either direction for miles.  Because there is a lot of forested area, the easy access has indeed been a pleasure.

We did, however, get out a bit further and went on a very nice hike in Osage Hills State Park which is just west of us about 15 miles in Pawhuska, OK.  A nice varied landscape, we walked by an old CCC site, a lake, and falls on the trail:

lookout tower

Nothing but the chimney left here....













and a foundation there

 On the left it looks like the forest grew over an old parking lot....with the cars still there!






Below, this building, a distance from the main CCC site, housed the dynamite used in construction

The CCC built structures to last!

 Not a big falls but very scenic!

Buffalo National River, AR

Our last adventure in Arkansas was a day trip to the Buffalo National River, about an hour and a half north east of where we were in Springdale.

This beautiful river nestled in the Ozarks was designated by Congress in 1972 as our first National River in order for it to be preserved as a free flowing stream.  The area contains many prehistoric sites, some 8,000 years old.  We walked two trails that day and put it on our list of places to return to some day as we saw but a fraction of the river.

 The Lost Valley Trail took us past Jigsaw Blocks.......

 ....and Natural Bridge......

 ....to Eden Falls.......

 and up to Eden Falls Cave, a shallow cave where the falls originates and signs of prehistoric  people were found.

 We then drove a few miles and admired the scenery....

 ...then it was another nice walk on the Whitaker Point Trail, a highly photographed overlook.  More beautiful scenery......

 ....ending at Whitaker Point from which you can see the Buffalo River...in the winter;)  When there are no leaves on the trees!  It was great nonetheless!

Whitaker Point

 Not many houses in this area but half of them looked like they were barely standing!

Bluff Dwellers Cavern, MO

We are now in Bartlesville, OK, visiting friends for a week.  We don't anticipate seeing many new things during the week here.....could change, of course.  I do want to put up a couple of places I did not get to on our last stop as we did so much there.

While in Springdale, AR, we drove up to Noel, Missouri to visit the Bluff Dwellers Cavern.  It had been recommended and gave us the chance to get into Missouri which is the only state west of the Mississippi we had not yet visited.

Loved this cavern!  Called Bluff Dwellers because of the 8,000 year old artifacts found out front and in the first large "room" of the cavern, we got to walk through several beautiful water carved tunnels.

Artifacts included human skulls seen at the bottom of this case:

 We saw several pipistrelle bats scattered throughout this cave.

 Had not seen this formation before!  Trying to find out the name....

 Got to see a couple more cave salamanders

 An opening in this passageway had water raining down from the high ceiling , just beautiful!