Week 71
My sister, Gloria, returned from her mission in Croatia at midnight Tuesday.  She's going to come pay us a visit in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait to see her.

We took advantage of Spring Break to explore a little more of Oklahoma.  On Wednesday we headed east--first stop Tulsa to experience Hurts Donut Company.  This is a chain in the midwest that seems heavily influenced by Voodoo Donuts in Portland, OR.  The Tulsa shop just opened last month; between being new and being spring break around the state, the line was very long (we waited almost an hour), but it was fun and we got some wonderful donuts.  The selection is amazing and kind of crazy.

Our selections were rather tame 

Our next stop was Muskogee (as in Okie from. . . ).  We went to the Five Civilized Tribes Museum, which highlighted the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes; all of which were forced to leave their native regions and march the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma (Indian Territory) in the 1800's.  The museum is right next to Honor Heights Park,  which was very lovely.  It will have an azalea festival in April, so we didn't see it in all its glory.  However, enough brave azaleas were blooming early that we could imagine how spectacular it will be in a few weeks. Then we went to the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame--located in the old train depot.  You kind of expect the country western stars from OK (Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Carrie Underwood, Toby Keith, etc) but there have been famous and influential jazz, classical, gospel, and even opera stars out of Oklahoma.  I came to the conclusion that there are far more musicians per capita from OK than from much larger states.

Hall of Fame and Five Tribes Museum

The highlight of Muskogee was the Muskogee War Memorial Park--it has a submarine, the USS Batfish, that fought in WWII, as well as the only surviving piece of the USS Oklahoma, the first ship sunk in Pearl Harbor. They floated the Batfish up the Arkansas River from a port in Texas to get it here.

Batfish in the distance, and part of the mast of USS Oklahoma recovered from the ocean

On the Batfish and the five military branches

We spent the night in Muskogee and then took the Cherokee Hills Byway to mosey up to Tahlequah.  The drive was beautiful because of the three lakes and the Arkansas and Illinois rivers along the way.  A very popular recreation area.  In Tahlequah we really enjoyed the Cherokee Heritage Center.  Our guide on the tour of the village was superb and really made history live for us.

The tallest Cherokee basket, a loom;  redbuds in bloom everywhere

More at the heritage center--bottom left he's making a flint arrowhead

We kept going north, then east almost to the Arkansas border to see Natural Falls State Park.  We only went to the Spring Falls, but it was very lovely.

The terrain was very different on that side of the state--we actually went up and down hills!  Haven't done that for a while.  

We continued to work on lessons on Friday, and are excited to have all our YSAs back from break. There was a big group at ward prayer tonight, so looked like most have arrived.