January 21st, 2011: Driving through OK

     The morning of January 21^st, we were on the road to Shawnee, OK by way of small highway that traveled the narrow Oklahoma panhandle.  We left Henry and Laura in Boulder, CO around 10 AM after a nice breakfast and coffee.  The highway that we chose to travel stretches from Colorado to Oklahoma along spectacular vistas and the weather was excellent.  We felt pretty good about the trip at this point, give all the "exposed stretches" of highway and winter weather were behind us.  Our trip to Oklahoma was characterized by big blue skies and dramatic cloud formations.  

 The arid mountain desserts of Wyoming and Colorado slowly gave way to the high plains that stretched as far as the eye can see in every direction.  Shawnee, OK would be an easy 10 hours from Boulder,m CO through rural farm land and large cattle ranches that seemed to be traveled mostly be truckers.  

Just like in the old Western movies set in cattle-country, tumbleweed infrequently rolled across the desolate 2-lane highway. We arrived in Shawnee, OK around 10 PM and made our way to the outskirts of town to the Citizen Potawatomi reservation.  

Given the late hours, we pulled into the Citizen Potawatomi Nation (CPN) police station, located in the center of the CPN reservation and headquarters to let the tribal leadership know we had arrived.  Our plan was to layover a day in Shawnee with the CPN folks to rest and relax before continuing on to Birmingham, AL.  

January 21st, 2011: Shanee, OK

     Dom’s family has been enrolled CPN members dating back roughly to the turn of the century.  Several years ago, Dom’s dad (Stan), mother (Val) and sister (Erin) had visited Shawnee, OK and connected with distant relative however Dom was not present on that trip. A couple weeks prior to departing on our Alaska-Alabama road trip, Dom emailed several folks at CPN inquiring about possible accommodations with local CPN College students.  A week before leaving Alaska, he received an email from Linda Capps, the CPN chairperson, informing us that CPN would be happy to host us for a night or two.  Given that we had not had any major trip delays and this was Dom’s first visit to Shawnee, OK, we elected to stay two nights in Shawnee to relax and learn about Oklahoma and the CPN people.  Although both Shatomi and Dom were new the area; our Shawnee hosts treated us as if we were close family by housing us in the newly renovated Elder housing. 

 The CPN police were happy to escort us to our apartment and were interested in our long trip south.  We joked around a little about our winter gear, snow tires, and extra gas.  The frozen winter that characterized our trip in Canada and the Northwest was now behind us- the temps in Shawnee,m OK were considerably warmer (~60F).  To top off this night, the CPN police informed us that our dinner at the local CPN casino would be complimentary.