4.20.2011 Ride: Medicine Park - Waurika, OK

I started off sleeping well but the chill set in and when I woke at 4:00 I had trouble getting back to sleep.  We were up at 6:00 getting ready for our ride back toward Denton, first stop Waurika, OK.  Compared to the past two days, a chilly morning and a wind from the north-northeast of 20mph.  I put on every article of biking clothing I had brought along including my rain coat.

The wind wasn't too bad to start and we made our way from Medicine Park and through Fort Sill fairly quickly.  I have to think that there are other sections of Lawton that don't feel so run down but our route certainly didn't take us through that part of town.  At the outskirts, where the houses seemed to be in even more disrepair, I spotted this sun on the front porch of a house and it felt like a real ray of sunshine on the cold, windy, grey morning.

Being in a bit of rush while wearing full fingered gloves with the wind blowing, I didn't allow myself to center this picture as I would have liked. 

We were headed out of Lawton but the highway we were on quickly narrowed into two lanes with absolutely no shoulder and too many cars and trucks speeding by.  This did not feel good.  We pulled off the road for a moment and I spotted two horses across the road eyeing us very curiously through the trees.

Fortunately, the traffic thinned out and the road flattened out making us very visible.  For the time being, the wind was at out backs.  Our route today would take us, alternately, with the wind and, at other times, right into the wind.

We stopped for lunch in Walters, OK.  Our choices were a Sonic, pizza at the gas station or Happy Stop.  We chose the latter.

As the day continued, the traffic grew less and less.  Fairly flat with some low rolling hills and pastures spreading way off into the distance.  If it weren't for the wind it would have been an almost perfect day of riding.

Abandoned barn in a pasture.  The tree in the front is what caught my eye.  I had to walk a good 100 feet into the pasture to get this shot.

Coming up a slow low ascent, I spotted this barn off in the distance.  This seemed to capture really well the isolation of the area.

About 10 miles before reaching Waurika, we went through Hastings.  All I expected was a house for the town center.  There were actually a few buildings, some in very good repair, a post office and even a restaurant.  But we didn't see any people.  It was an odd sort of town in the middle of no where that seemed to be going through a revitalization.  The house above struck me because of the support column that is leaning inward.  It had a matching similarly leaning support on the other side.

I took this picture while riding on the bike.  I liked the very simple white/grey of the barn against the sky.  Since I couldn't really see the picture as I was taking it, I wasn't sure how this was going to come out but I rather like it.

The clouds as we came into Waurika.

Today's Ride: 6hrs. 7mins.  65.38 miles.  51-69 degrees.  20mph winds.  Miles YTD: 2,223.34