DAY 4 – Nature Break – 20080527

Today the weather was pretty washed out from yesterday’s storms. While there was a slight risk of storms into extreme southwest Oklahoma (and more into Texas), we would have been many hours away from where we’d like to start our long trek to eastern Nebraska for Thursday expected action (the next decent chance for significant storms). We, therefor, chose to not go far south from Wichita unless the potential for significant storms in Oklahoma materialized (which it didn’t). The rule of the day was blue skies, sun, and low scattered cumulus blobs dotted across the sky.

We played tourist, first visiting the Twister Museum in Wakita, OK (where one of the climactic — or is that climatic — scenes of the movie “Twister” was filmed). We also grabbed lunch at the Twister Cafe, across the street, where we mingled with locals like Judy, the restaurant owner. The townsfolk of Wakita are the friendliest people you could hope to meet; one wonderes how they survive so far off the beaten path. As we learned in Greensburg yesterday, it takes a special breed of people to thrive here in the Great Plains. Citizens of the Great Plains do not surrender to the forces of nature easily. They are a proud and resilient breed,

After lunch, we charged down OK 11A, jogged west, then headed south to the Great Salt Plains Lake National WIldlife Area to get some nature photographs. As we shot pictures and video of the local residents (dragonflies, various bird species (ilike sand cranes), swarming red ants, and a pair of water moccasins skim the lake surface in search of their afternoon snacks. We also took some pictures of the dam and its spillway, used to control local flooding (as we had in the area last night).