Bison and OK Gardens

Tonight we are near Bartellsville, OK at Osage Hills State Park. Arrived around 5 and jumped on our bikes. A small waterfall and an overlook built by the CCC in the 1930's were the rewards. Nice to see trees and green. Back roads have shown us rolling hills, small towns, oil pumps, wind farms, natural gas rigs, and lots of cattle. All of our sealed containers are compressed and breath a sigh of relief when we open them now that we are closer to sea level. 

Earlier today we drove northeast through Oklahoma, starting at the visitors center from last night's campground. A small herd of Buffalo live on 390 acres at Foss State Park, so we finally found live Bison.

Beth adopted a small Buffalo at the State Park headquarters. "Buffy" the Bison is now our dashboard mascot leading us to new adventures.

After visiting with the buffalo and confirming that their "patties" are the size we found in Arizona, we headed to OSU based on a listing in "100 Best US Public Gardens." Their botanical gardens were okay, but not as extensive as those associated with universities at home. I did like the cacti exhibit. Here are some photos of specimen plants we found interesting...

After the relaxing stop at OSU, the van chimed and informed us it was running low on diesel emissions fluid (DEF), so we stopped at a shell station where they wanted $6 a gallon. Knowing that was too high, I asked Beth to search for the nearest Wal-mart and she found one on our way. It ended up being in Kingfisher, the town where Sam Walton was born. I'm not a Wal-Mart fan, but he was a good businessman and they had DEF at $9 for a 2.5 gallon jug!

Today's unique roadside sighting was a bus painted with zebra stripes. We had to stop and take a photo to share with the Zebracorn robotics team. I wonder if they could convince the school to paint a bus in the team colors?